eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Maternal obesity may disrupt offspring metabolism by inducing oocyte genome hyper-methylation via increased DNMTs

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Shuo Chao
   2. Jun Lu
   3. Li-Jun Li
   4. Hong-Yan Guo
   5. Kuipeng Xu
   6. Ning Wang
   7. Shu-Xian Zhao
   8. Xiao-Wen Jin
   9. Shao-Ge Wang
   10. Shen Yin
   11. Wei Shen
   12. Ming-Hui Zhao
   13. Gui-An Huang
   14. Qing-Yuan Sun
   15. Zhao-Jia Ge

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript reports important findings on the impact of maternal obesity on offspring metabolism. It presents solid evidence that maternal obesity induces genomic methylation alterations in oocytes, which can be partly transmitted to F2 in females, and that melatonin is involved in regulating the hyper-methylation of high fat diet oocytes by increasing the expression of DNMTs via the cAMP/PKA/CREB pathway. This study would be of interest to biologists in the fields of epigenetics and metabolism.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Decoding the physics of observed actions in the human brain

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Moritz F Wurm
   2. Doruk Yiğit Erigüç

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In an important fMRI study with an elegant experimental design and rigorous cross-decoding analyses, this work shows a convincing dissociation between two parietal regions in visually processing actions. Specifically, aIPL is found to be sensitive to the causal effects of observed actions, while SPL is sensitive to the patterns of body motion involved in those actions. The work will be of broad interest to cognitive neuroscientists, particularly vision and action researchers.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Muscarinic receptors mediate motivation via preparatory neural activity in humans

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. John P Grogan
   2. Matthias Raemaekers
   3. Maaike MH van Swieten
   4. Alexander L Green
   5. Martin J Gillies
   6. Sanjay G Manohar

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors have reported an important study in which they use a double-blind design to explore pharmacological manipulations in the context of a behavioral task. While the sample size is small, the use of varied methodology, including electrophysiology, behavior, and pharmacology, makes this manuscript particularly notable. Overall, the findings are solid and motivate future explanations into the relationships between acetylcholine and motivation.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Discovery of a heparan sulfate binding domain in monkeypox virus H3 as an anti-poxviral drug target combining AI and MD simulations

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Bin Zheng
   2. Meimei Duan
   3. Yifen Huang
   4. Shangchen Wang
   5. Jun Qiu
   6. Zhuojian Lu
   7. Lichao Liu
   8. Guojin Tang
   9. Lin Cheng
   10. Peng Zheng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This work presents important findings regarding the interaction of the monkeypox virus (MPXV) attachment H3 protein with the cellular receptor heparan sulfate and the use of this information to develop antivirals potentially effective against all orthopoxviruses. Using a combination of state-of-the art computational and wet experiments the authors present convincing evidence to sustain their claims. These results will interest those working on basic orthopoxviruses biology and antiviral development.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Stimulus-specificity of surround-induced responses in primary visual cortex

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Nisa Cuevas
   2. Boris Sotomayor-Gómez
   3. Athanasia Tzanou
   4. Irene Onorato
   5. Brian Rummell
   6. Cem Uran
   7. Ana Broggini
   8. Martin Vinck

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study investigates the selectivity of neuronal responses in the neocortex and thalamus to visual stimuli presented far outside their receptive fields. The study shows convincing evidence for a long-latency surround-induced response in primary visual cortex that is absent in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus and does not depend strongly on the visual characteristics of the surround stimulus. The paper should be of interest to neurophysiologists interested in vision and contextual modulations.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The novel role of Kallistatin in linking metabolic syndromes and cognitive memory deterioration by inducing amyloid-β plaques accumulation and tau protein hyperphosphorylation

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Weiwei Qi
   2. Yanlan Long
   3. Ziming Li
   4. Zhen Zhao
   5. Jinhui Shi
   6. Wanting Xie
   7. Laijian Wang
   8. Yandan Tan
   9. Ti Zhou
   10. Minting Liang
   11. Ping Jiang
   12. Bin Jiang
   13. Xia Yang
   14. Guoquan Gao

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study identified a molecular mechanism linking diabetes to AD risk and the data presented are convincing. The authors investigated the role of kallistatin in metabolic abnormalities associated with AD and identified that Kallistatin is a key player that mediates Aβ accumulation and tau hyperphosphorylation in AD. This manuscript provides novel insights into the pathogenesis of AD, indicating that the hypolipidemic drug fenofibrate attenuates AD-like pathology in Kallistatin transgenic mice.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Growth consequences of the inhomogeneous organization of the bacterial cytoplasm

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Johan H van Heerden
   2. Alicia Berkvens
   3. Daan H de Groot
   4. Frank J Bruggeman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study examines E. coli growth and division, suggesting that inhomogeneous organization of ribosomes in the cytoplasm results in cell size-dependent growth rate perturbations. The work is conceptually appealing, but incomplete due to shortcomings in the experiments and modeling.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Adaptive chunking improves effective working memory capacity in a prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia circuit

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Aneri Soni
   2. Michael J Frank

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work proposes a neural network model of interactions between the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia to implement adaptive resource allocation in working memory, where the gating strategies for storage are adjusted by reinforcement learning. Numerical simulations provide convincing evidence for the superiority of the model in improving effective capacity, optimizing resource management, and reducing error rates, as well as for its human-like performance. This work will be of broad interest to computational and cognitive neuroscientists, and may also interest machine-learning researchers who seek to develop brain-inspired machine-learning algorithms for memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. JAK inhibition decreases the autoimmune burden in Down syndrome

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Angela L Rachubinski
   2. Elizabeth Wallace
   3. Emily Gurnee
   4. Belinda A Enriquez-Estrada
   5. Kayleigh R Worek
   6. Keith P Smith
   7. Paula Araya
   8. Katherine A Waugh
   9. Ross E Granrath
   10. Eleanor Britton
   11. Hannah R Lyford
   12. Micah G Donovan
   13. Neetha Paul Eduthan
   14. Amanda A Hill
   15. Barry Martin
   16. Kelly D Sullivan
   17. Lina Patel
   18. Deborah J Fidler
   19. Matthew D Galbraith
   20. Cory A Dunnick
   21. David A Norris
   22. Joaquín M Espinosa

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Rachubinski and colleagues provide an important manuscript that includes two major advances in understanding immune dysregulation in a large cohort of individuals with Down syndrome. The work comprises compelling, comprehensive, and state-of-the-art clinical, immunological, and autoantibody assessment of autoimmune/inflammatory manifestations. Additionally, the authors report promising results from a clinical trial with the JAK inhibitor tofacitinib for individuals with dermatological autoimmune disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. PPI-hotspotID for detecting protein–protein interaction hot spots from the free protein structure

    This article has 6 authors:

    1. Yao Chi Chen
    2. Karen Sargsyan
    3. Jon D Wright
    4. Yu-Hsien Chen
    5. Yi-Shuian Huang
    6. Carmay Lim

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      The manuscript presents a machine-learning method to predict protein hotspot residues. The validation is incomplete, along with the misinterpretation of the results with other current methods like FTMap.

    Reviewed by eLife