eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Serotonin modulates infraslow oscillation in the dentate gyrus during non-REM sleep

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Gergely F Turi
   2. Sasa Teng
   3. Xinyue Chen
   4. Emily CY Lim
   5. Carla Dias
   6. Ruining Hu
   7. Ruizhi Wang
   8. Fenghua Zhen
   9. Yueqing Peng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study shows that a very slow (infraslow) oscillation occurs in voltage recordings from the dentate gyrus of the adult mouse. The authors suggest that it is related to sleep stage and serotonin acting at one type of serotonin receptor in the dentate gyrus. The results are significant because they suggest new insight into how a slow oscillation affects memory through serotonin receptors in the dentate gyrus. Convincing data are provided to support the claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Reactive oxygen species suppress phagocyte surveillance by oxidizing cytoskeletal regulators

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Iuliia Ferling
   2. Steffen Pfalzgraf
   3. Lea Moutounet
   4. Lanhui Qiu
   5. Yumeng Li
   6. Yuhuan Zhou
   7. Sergio Grinstein
   8. Spencer A Freeman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this study, Ferling and colleagues provide convincing evidence demonstrating that myeloid cells exert distinct, cargo-dependent responses during and after phagocytosis. These important findings establish previously unrecognized insights into the function(s) of myeloid cells in immunosurveillance and are thus likely to be broadly impactful across the spectrum of biomedical disciplines including immunology and cell biology. Notwithstanding these clear strengths of the article, some minor issues were noted pertinent to the relative opaqueness of the mechanisms underpinning context-specific RhoA activation.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Inclusive, exclusive and hierarchical atlas of NFATc1+/PDGFR-α+ cells in dental and periodontal mesenchyme

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Xue Yang
   2. Chuyi Han
   3. Changhao Yu
   4. Bin Zhou
   5. Ling Ye
   6. Feifei Li
   7. Fanyuan Yu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Utilizing transgenic lineage tracing techniques and tissue clearing-based advanced imaging and three-dimensional slices reconstruction, the authors comprehensively mapped the distribution atlas of NFATc1+ and PDGFR-α+ cells in dental and periodontal mesenchyme and tracked their in vivo fate trajectories. This important work extends our understanding of NFATc1+ and PDGFR-α+ cells in dental and periodontal mesenchyme homeostasis, and should provide impact on clinical application and investigation. The strength of this work is compelling in employing CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing to generate two dual recombination systems, and mapped gNFATc1+ and PDGFR-α+cells residing in dental and periodontal mesenchyme, their capacity for progeny cell generation, and their inclusive, exclusive and hierarchical relations in homeostasis, generating a spatiotemporal atlas of these skeletal stem cell population.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Simply crushed zizyphi spinosi semen prevents neurodegenerative diseases and reverses age-related cognitive decline in mice

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Tomohiro Umeda
   2. Ayumi Sakai
   3. Rumi Uekado
   4. Keiko Shigemori
   5. Ryota Nakajima
   6. Kei Yamana
   7. Takami Tomiyama

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors made a useful finding that Zizyphi spinosi semen, a traditional Chinese medicine, has demonstrated excellent biological activity and potential therapeutic effects against Alzheimer's disease (AD). The researchers presented the effects, but the research evidence for the mechanism was incomplete. The main claims were only partially supported.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Passive shaping of intra- and intercellular m6A dynamics via mRNA metabolism

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. David Dierks
   2. Ran Shachar
   3. Ronit Nir
   4. Miguel Angel Garcia-Campos
   5. Anna Uzonyi
   6. David Wiener
   7. Ursula Toth
   8. Walter Rossmanith
   9. Lior Lasman
   10. Boris Slobodin
   11. Jacob H Hanna
   12. Yaron Antebi
   13. Ruth Scherz-Shouval
   14. Schraga Schwartz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a fundamental finding on how levels of m6A levels are controlled, invoking a consolidated model where degradation of modified RNAs in the cytoplasm plays a primary role in shaping m6A patterns and dynamics, rather than needing active regulation by m6A erasers and other related processes. The evidence is compelling through its use of transcriptome-wide data and mechanistic modeling. Relevant for any reader with an interest in RNA metabolism, this new framework consolidates previous observations and highlights the importance of careful experimentation for evaluation m6A levels.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. CausalXtract, a flexible pipeline to extract causal effects from live-cell time-lapse imaging data

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Franck Simon
   2. Maria Colomba Comes
   3. Tiziana Tocci
   4. Louise Dupuis
   5. Vincent Cabeli
   6. Nikita Lagrange
   7. Arianna Mencattini
   8. Maria Carla Parrini
   9. Eugenio Martinelli
   10. Herve Isambert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study represents a data processing pipeline to discover causal interactions from time-lapse imaging data, and convincingly illustrates it on a challenging application for the analysis of tumor-on-chip ecosystem data. The authors describe the raw data they used (imaging data), go through a step-by-step description on how to extract the features they are interested in from the raw data, and how to perform the causal discovery process. This paper tackles the problem of learning causal interactions from temporal data, which is applicable to many biological applications.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Regulation of lung cancer initiation and progression by the stem cell determinant Musashi

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Alison G Barber
   2. Cynthia M Quintero
   3. Michael Hamilton
   4. Nirakar Rajbhandari
   5. Roman Sasik
   6. Yan Zhang
   7. Carla Kim
   8. Hatim Husain
   9. Xin Sun
   10. Tannishtha Reya

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study shows a significant role for Mushashi-2 (Msi2) in lung adenocarcinoma. The authors provided solid data that support the requirement for Msi2 in tumor growth and progression, although the study would have been strengthened by including more patient samples and additional evidence regarding Msi2+ cells being more responsive to transformation. These findings are of interest to both the lung cancer and the RNA binding protein fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Robust variability of grid cell properties within individual grid modules enhances encoding of local space

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. William T Redman
   2. Santiago Acosta-Mendoza
   3. Xue-Xin Wei
   4. Michael J Goard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines the variability in spacing and direction of entorhinal grid cells, providing convincing evidence that such variability helps disambiguate locations within an environment. This study will be of interest to neuroscientists working on spatial navigation and, more broadly, on neural coding.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. A general mechanism for initiating the bacterial general stress response

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Rishika Baral
   2. Kristin Ho
   3. Ramasamy P Kumar
   4. Jesse B Hopkins
   5. Maxwell B Watkins
   6. Salvatore LaRussa
   7. Suhaily Caban-Penix
   8. Logan A Calderone
   9. Niels Bradshaw

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combines genetic analysis, biochemistry, and structural modeling to reveal new insights into how changes in protein-protein structure activate signal transduction as part of the bacterial general stress response. The data, which was collected using validated and standard methods, and its interpretations are convincing; however, to fully meet the title's promise, additional experimental evidence is needed to strengthen the proposed model and its potential application to other systems. This manuscript will be of broad interest to microbiologists, structural biologists, and cell biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. CUTS RNA Biosensor for the Real-Time Detection of TDP-43 Loss-of-Function

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Longxin Xie
    2. Jessica Merjane
    3. Cristian A Bergmann
    4. Jiazhen Xu
    5. Shruthi Balasubramaniyan
    6. Bryan Hurtle
    7. Charleen T Chu
    8. Christopher J Donnelly

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important study developed a new sensor for TDP-43 activity that is sensitive and robust that should strongly impact the field's ability to monitor whether TDP-43 is functional or not. The evidence, though limited to cell culture, is compelling and is the first demonstration that a GFP on/off system can be used to assess genetic TDP-43 mutants as well as loss of soluble TDP-43.

    Reviewed by eLife