eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Subcellular visualization of the distribution of atmospheric dinitrogen fixed by Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus bacteria in maize

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Greg McMahon
   2. Stephanie Rey
   3. Katie Moore
   4. Gina Greenidge
   5. Dhaval Patel
   6. Erik H Murchie
   7. David Dent
   8. Edward Cocking

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This solid and innovative study explores the uptake of fixed nitrogen in maize chloroplasts facilitated by symbiotic Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus bacteria. The findings provide valuable insights into plant-microbe interactions, particularly highlighting a symbiotic mechanism of nitrogen delivery independent nodule formation. Additional controls would help to substantiate the findings and enhance the overall strength of the evidence.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Endopiriform neurons projecting to ventral CA1 are a critical node for recognition memory

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Naoki Yamawaki
   2. Hande Login
   3. Solbjørg Østergaard Feld-Jakobsen
   4. Bernadett Mercedesz Molnar
   5. Mads Zippor Kirkegaard
   6. Maria Moltesen
   7. Aleksandra Okrasa
   8. Jelena Radulovic
   9. Asami Tanimura

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study offers insights into the function and connectivity patterns of a relatively unknown afferent input from the endopiriform to the CA1 subfield of the ventral hippocampus, suggesting a neural mechanism that suppresses the processing of familiar stimuli in favor of detecting memory guided novelty. The strength of evidence is convincing, with careful anatomical and electrophysiological circuit characterization. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying the neural circuitry of behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. ASBAR: an Animal Skeleton-Based Action Recognition framework. Recognizing great ape behaviors in the wild using pose estimation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Michael Fuchs
   2. Emilie Genty
   3. Klaus Zuberbühler
   4. Paul Cotofrei

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a new framework (ASBAR) that combines open-source toolboxes for pose estimation and behavior recognition to automate the process of categorizing behaviors in wild apes from video data. The authors present compelling evidence that this pipeline can categorize simple wild ape behaviors from out-of-context video at a similar level of accuracy as previous models, while simultaneously vastly reducing the size of the model. The study's results should be of particular interest to primatologists and other behavioral biologists working with natural populations.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Neural population dynamics underlying evidence accumulation in multiple rat brain regions

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Brian DePasquale
   2. Carlos D Brody
   3. Jonathan W Pillow

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable paper presents findings showing that different brain regions were best described by a distinct accumulation model, which all differed from the model that best described the rat's choices. These findings are solid because the authors present a very strong methodological approach. This work will be of interest to a wide neuroscientific audience.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The Generalized Haldane (GH) model tracking population size changes and resolving paradoxes of genetic drift

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Yongsen Ruan
   2. Xiaopei Wang
   3. Mei Hou
   4. Liying Huang
   5. Wenjie Diao
   6. Miles Tracy
   7. Shuhua Xu
   8. Weiwei Zhai
   9. Zhongqi Liufu
   10. Haijun Wen
   11. Chung-I Wu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a useful model of genetic drift by incorporating variance in reproductive success, aiming to address several apparent paradoxes in molecular evolution. However, some of the apparent paradoxes only arise in the most basic version of standard models and have been reconciled in more advanced models. Nonetheless, this paper offers intuitive explanations for these apparent paradoxes, by adopting a new perspective and solid modeling and analysis. More broadly, the proposed model provides an alternative framework to address puzzling observations in molecular evolution, which will be of interest to evolutionary and population geneticists.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Loss of dihydroceramide desaturase drives neurodegeneration by disrupting endoplasmic reticulum and lipid droplet homeostasis in glial cells

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Yuqing Zhu
   2. Kevin Cho
   3. Haluk Lacin
   4. Yi Zhu
   5. Jose T DiPaola
   6. Beth A Wilson
   7. Gary Patti
   8. James B Skeath

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study on the loss of DEGS1 in the developing larval brain convincingly shows the accumulation of dihydroceramide in the CNS which induces severe alterations in the morphology of glial subtypes as well as a reduction in glial number. The localization of DEGS1/ifc primarily to the ER is also compelling and interesting, and the loss of DEGS1/ifc clearly drives ER expansion and reduces the levels of TGs. This is an important contribution to the role of lipid metabolism in neural development and disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. The title and authors for this article are not available from our external data provider yet:
   10.48550/arxiv.2112.05098v5

8. A novel monomeric amyloid β-activated signaling pathway regulates brain development via inhibition of microglia

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hyo Jun Kwon
   2. Devi Santhosh
   3. Zhen Huang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study describes a link between beta-amyloid monomers, regulation of microglial activity and assembly of neocortex during development. It brings valuable findings that have theoretical and practical implications in the field of neuronal migration, neuronal ectopia and type II lissencephaly. Unfortunately, the evidence is incomplete and the manuscript would benefit from additional experiments to clarify the relationship between Ric8a and APP and bolster the findings.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. A temporally restricted function of the dopamine receptor Dop1R2 during memory formation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Jenifer C Kaldun
   2. Emanuele Calia
   3. Ganesh Chinmai Bangalore Mukunda
   4. Cornelia Fritsch
   5. Nikita Komarov
   6. Simon G Sprecher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors design and implement an elegant strategy to delete genomic sequences encoding the dopamine receptor dop1R2 from specific subsets of mushroom body neurons (ab, a'b' and gamma) and show that while none of these manipulations affect short term appetitive or aversive memory, loss of dop1R2 from ab or a'b' block the ability of flies to display measurable forms of longer forms of memory. These findings are important in confirming and extending prior observations, and well supported by convincing evidence that build on precise techniques for genetic perturbation.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. A toolbox for genetic targeting of the claustrum

    This article has 10 authors:

    1. Joël Tuberosa
    2. Madlaina Boillat
    3. Julien Dal Col
    4. Leonardo Marconi
    5. Julien Codourey
    6. Loris Mannino
    7. Elena Georgiou
    8. Marc Menoud
    9. Alan Carleton
    10. Ivan Rodriguez

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This valuable research identifies Smim32 as a new genetic marker for the claustrum and generates transgenic mouse lines aimed at enhancing specificity when studying this brain region. However, the evidence supporting the increased specificity of this marker and its associated transgenic lines is inadequate, as Smim32's specificity to the claustrum is limited. Nevertheless, this work will be of interest to researchers studying the molecular organization of the claustrum.

    Reviewed by eLife