eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Transcriptome-wide identification of 5-methylcytosine by deaminase and reader protein-assisted sequencing

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Jiale Zhou
   2. Ding Zhao
   3. Jinze Li
   4. Deqiang Kong
   5. Xiangrui Li
   6. Renquan Zhang
   7. Yuru Liang
   8. Xun Gao
   9. Yuqiang Qian
   10. Di Wang
   11. Jiahui Chen
   12. Liangxue Lai
   13. Yang Han
   14. Zhanjun Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This potentially useful study introduces an orthogonal approach for detecting RNA modification, without chemical modification of RNA, which often results in RNA degradation and therefore loss of information. Compared to previous versions, the most recent one is improved and sufficiently aligned with the standards of the field to merit consideration by the research community, making the evidence solid according to said standards. Nevertheless, uncertainty regarding false positive and false negative rates remains, as it does for some of the alternative approaches. With more rigorous validation, the approach might be of particular interest for sites in RNA molecules where modifications are rare.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A genome-wide association study implicates the olfactory system in Drosophila melanogaster diapause-associated lifespan extension and fecundity

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Sreesankar Easwaran
   2. Denise J Montell

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study shows how genetic variation is associated with fecundity following a period of reproductive diapause in female Drosophila. The work identifies the olfactory system as central to successful diapause with associated changes in longevity and fecundity. While the methods used are convincing, a limitation of the study, as of any other laboratory-based investigation is the challenge of demonstrating how well measures for fitness related to diapause and its recovery correlates with realities encountered during development in the wild.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. A ‘double-edged’ role for type-5 metabotropic glutamate receptors in pain disclosed by light-sensitive drugs

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Serena Notartomaso
   2. Nico Antenucci
   3. Mariacristina Mazzitelli
   4. Xavier Rovira
   5. Serena Boccella
   6. Flavia Ricciardi
   7. Francesca Liberatore
   8. Xavier Gomez-Santacana
   9. Tiziana Imbriglio
   10. Milena Cannella
   11. Charleine Zussy
   12. Livio Luongo
   13. Sabatino Maione
   14. Cyril Goudet
   15. Giuseppe Battaglia
   16. Amadeu Llebaria
   17. Ferdinando Nicoletti
   18. Volker Neugebauer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this interesting study, the authors have used light-sensitive mGlu5 negative allosteric modulators to determine the role of these receptors in a chronic pain model. These findings could be useful to the pain field, but the evidence supporting these claims is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Volume electron microscopy reveals unique laminar synaptic characteristics in the human entorhinal cortex

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Sergio Plaza-Alonso
   2. Nicolas Cano-Astorga
   3. Javier DeFelipe
   4. Lidia Alonso-Nanclares

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a useful examination of dense neuroanatomy in human postmortem medial entorhinal cortex, using a large number of small electron microscopy image volumes sampled from multiple cortical layers and individuals. The authors use solid experimental and annotation techniques, demonstrating the suitability of postmortem tissue reconstructions for analysis and presenting careful, detailed measurements of synapse properties and overall tissue composition. However, there is inadequate support connecting these findings to claims about general connectivity in medial entorhinal cortex, since factors affecting interpretability like noise, the spatial scales examined, and relationships between structural properties and connectivity are not characterized. With a more thorough contextualization, this work would be of interest for studies of cellular neuroanatomy or brain network organization.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Quantitative modeling of the emergence of macroscopic grid-like representations

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Ikhwan Bin Khalid
   2. Eric T Reifenstein
   3. Naomi Auer
   4. Lukas Kunz
   5. Richard Kempter

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This computational work represents a valuable and long overdue assessment of the potential mechanisms associating patterns of activity of entorhinal grid cells, recorded mostly in rodents, with the population property of hexasymmetry detected in non-invasive human studies. The methodic comparison of alternative hypotheses is compelling, and the conclusions are important for the future design of experiments assessing the neural correlates of human navigation across physical, virtual, or conceptual spaces.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Modulation of brain signal variability in visual cortex reflects aging, GABA, and behavior

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Poortata Lalwani
   2. Thad Polk
   3. Douglas D Garrett

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study combines across multiple complementary neuroscientific methods to understand the neural response to visual stimulus complexity in the human brain across lifespan. Lalwani et al., provide solid evidence, drawing from appropriate and validated methodology. A weakness is that key information about methodological details and controls is still outstanding, as is a discussion on how generalizable the findings are. With these elements strengthened, the study would be of broad interest to neuroscientists and biologists interested in aging and sensory processing.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Prognostic Significance of preoperative serum CA125, CA19-9, CA72-4, CEA, and AFP in Patients with Endometrial cancer

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Zi-hao Wang
   2. Yun-zheng Zhang
   3. Shu-wen Ge
   4. Luhe-Shan
   5. Bo Wang
   6. Zi-yu Zhang
   7. Qi-jun Wu
   8. Xiao-xin Ma

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding on prognostic values of serum CA125, CEA, and AFP for predicting patient outcomes of endometrial cancer. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although inclusion of detailed discussion of present results with prior documented findings would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to scientists working on endometrial cancer.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Body mass and growth rates predict protein intake across animals

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Stav Talal
   2. Jon F Harrison
   3. Ruth Farington
   4. Jacob P Youngblood
   5. Hector E Medina
   6. Rick Overson
   7. Arianne J Cease

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     How and why nutritional requirements change over development and differ between species are significant questions with wide-ranging implications spanning ecology to health. In this manuscript, Talal et al. set out to address these questions in laboratory and field experiments with grasshoppers and in a comparative analysis of different species. The laboratory experiments are convincing but the field and comparative aspects are not sufficiently well developed. In general, the study offers some evidence of a universal shift from high protein to high carbohydrate intake during ontogeny in animals, but the methods are not clear and/or appropriate to support the goals and conclusions of the manuscript as it is.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Mir221/222 drive synovial hyperplasia and arthritis by targeting cell cycle inhibitors and chromatin remodeling components

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Fani Roumelioti
   2. Christos Tzaferis
   3. Dimitris Konstantopoulos
   4. Dimitra Papadopoulou
   5. Alejandro Prados
   6. Maria Sakkou
   7. Anastasios Liakos
   8. Panagiotis Chouvardas
   9. Theodore Meletakos
   10. Yiannis Pandis
   11. Niki Karagianni
   12. Maria C Denis
   13. Maria Fousteri
   14. Maria Armaka
   15. George Kollias

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important manuscript used state-of-the-art techniques and employed relevant animal models to provide both convincing and solid evidence supporting the regulatory role of microRNA cluster 221/222 in rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblast. The findings of this work offer significant advances to current knowledge which will be interesting to a wide range audience in the rheumatology and bone research fields. However, whereas models, techniques, and analyses are solid, certain concepts related to the role of immune and bone cells are limited.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Dynamic tracking of native precursors in adult mice

    This article has 10 authors:

    1. Suying Liu
    2. Sarah E Adams
    3. Haotian Zheng
    4. Juliana Ehnot
    5. Seul K Jung
    6. Greer Jeffrey
    7. Theresa Menna
    8. Louise Purton
    9. Hongzhe Lee
    10. Peter Kurre

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important study by Liu and colleagues uses lineage tracing of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in situ to infer the clonal dynamics of adult hematopoiesis. The authors apply a new mathematical analysis framework enabling a wider range of clonal estimation and the revised study 1) provides evidence of polyclonal adult hematopoiesis, 2) provides insights on clonal dynamics during fetal liver hematopoiesis, and 3) reveals unexpectedly high polyclonality in a mouse model of bone marrow failure (Fanconi anemia), arguing against the prevalent views of clonal attrition in this context. The evidence in this extensively revised and improved study is compelling, with methods, data and analyses more rigorous than the current state-of-the-art, which will be of broad interest not only to stem cell and developmental biologists working on hematopoiesis, but also to researchers working on other systems.

    Reviewed by eLife