eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. A shared neural code for gender across faces, bodies, and objects in the human brain

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Wenjie Liu
   2. Xiqian Lu
   3. Yuhui Cheng
   4. Ruidi Wang
   5. Xinquan Lu
   6. Xiangyong Yuan
   7. Yi Jiang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigates whether perceived gender is represented in the brain in a category-invariant manner across faces, bodies, and objects, identifying the right middle temporal gyrus (rMTG) as a potential locus. The evidence is incomplete due to major conceptual concerns, weak statistical methods, and unaddressed low-level confounds like stimulus size and motion. This work will be of interest to psychology and social neuroscience researchers in face and person perception literature, provided the authors temper their claims regarding abstract representation.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Reproductive experience promotes permanent body growth independently of growth hormone

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Gabriel O de Souza
   2. Willian O dos Santos
   3. Frederick Wasinski
   4. Ligia MM de Sousa
   5. Andressa G Amaral
   6. Daniela O Gusmao
   7. Edward O List
   8. John J Kopchick
   9. Gimena Fernandez
   10. Mario Perelló
   11. Carla RP Oliveira
   12. Manuel H Aguiar-Oliveira
   13. Jose Donato

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reports a novel phenomenon of maternal growth during pregnancy that is independent of growth hormone (GH), adding a new dimension to maternal biology of reproduction. The evidence is convincing and supported by state-of-the-art methodologies conducted in mice and persuasive, interesting and unique observations in humans with hereditary isolated GH deficiency.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Hierarchical Neural Circuit Theory of Normalization and Inter-areal Communication

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Asit Pal
   2. Shivang Rawat
   3. David J Heeger
   4. Stefano Martiniani

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study extends a model of cortical normalization (ORGaNICs) to interacting cortical areas and shows that communication through coherence and communication subspaces can arise from a single set of dynamics. The evidence is convincing, showing analytically that contrast-dependent gamma dynamics and a low-dimensional inter-areal communication subspace arise from one parameter set. The work will interest neuroscientists and theorists concerned with inter-areal communication, cortical oscillations, and divisive normalization.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. dbGIST: An LLM-Assisted Multi-Omics Resource for Target Exploration and Cross-Dataset Validation in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Zhao Sun
   2. Qian Zhao
   3. Jie-Han Li
   4. Jia-Jing Li
   5. Hao Liu
   6. Yan-Xu Guo
   7. Ya-Dong Tang
   8. Fei Yang
   9. Xin Liu
   10. San-Fei Peng
   11. Wunan Mi
   12. Ge Zhang
   13. Zhen Zhang
   14. Ming-Liang Yuan
   15. Guang-Hui Li
   16. Yun-Fei Wang
   17. Chao Liu
   18. Sheng-Lei Li
   19. Jing-Hua Yang
   20. Yang Fu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The paper provides a valuable, foundational dataset that will undoubtedly provide substantial value to the cancer research community. The aggregation and harmonization of a broad, rich, multi-omic dataset is convincing and will potentially support further downstream research on GIST, which currently has poor supporting datasets. Support for the accompanying claims is more incomplete, however: the biological demonstration rests on a single gene tested by one approach, several analyses lack sample sizes and multiple-testing correction, the claims made for the LLM assistant are not backed by direct evaluation, and the curated data matrices would ideally be deposited independently of the web.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Functional Convergence of Genetically Diverse B-Cell Receptors in Simian-HIV Infected Rhesus Macaques

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Shengli Song
   2. Hui Li
   3. Chen-Hao Yeh
   4. Akiko Watanabe
   5. Masayuki Kuraoka
   6. Hongmei Gao
   7. Xiaoying Shen
   8. Celia C. LaBranche
   9. Wilton B. Williams
   10. Kevin O. Saunders
   11. M. Anthony Moody
   12. Kevin Wiehe
   13. David C. Montefiori
   14. Barton. F. Haynes
   15. George M. Shaw
   16. Garnett Kelsoe

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study characterizes how antibody responses converge on similar functional solutions despite diverse genetic backgrounds, providing a resource that is of importance in understanding immune responses and informing vaccine research. The evidence is solid, with extensive and well-executed analyses supporting the primary findings, although broader conclusions regarding vaccine design would benefit from more cautious interpretation and fuller discussion of the study's limitations. The work will be of interest to researchers studying antibody responses, viral evolution, and vaccine development.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Frequency dynamics predict viral fitness, antigenic relationships and epidemic growth

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Marlin D Figgins
   2. Trevor Bedford

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this important work, the authors develop methods to forecast epidemic growth from viral sequencing data alone. The evidence for the usefulness of the approach is solid, but some justifications and methodological details are incomplete. This study should be of broad interest to the community interested in viral dynamics and epidemiology.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Quantitative modelling of biological response dynamics reveals novel patterns in plant volatile signalling

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jamie M. Waterman
   2. Gareth J. Moore
   3. Loren K. Amdahl-Culleton
   4. Sara Hoefer
   5. Matthias Erb

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents the development of a model to quantify the dynamics of stress-induced volatile emissions in plants and identify biologically relevant differences in these responses. The model is based on a convincing methodology and represents a starting point for studies of similar responses in other plants or investigations of induced phenotypes in different biological systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Characterising semantic prioritisation in visual working memory

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Casper Kerrén
   2. Carlos González-García
   3. Juan Linde-Domingo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study addresses a timely question about semantic prioritisation in visual working memory, using behavioural manipulations and drift-diffusion modelling. However, the strength of evidence is incomplete for the broader claims about working-memory representations because the main interpretation relies on indirect inferences from non-decision time, which cannot uniquely identify memory access or retrieval.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Molecular basis of mitogen-activated protein kinase ERK2 activation by its upstream kinase MEK1

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Jill von Velsen
   2. Pauline Juyoux
   3. Nicola Piasentin
   4. Hayden Fisher
   5. Karine Lapouge
   6. Oscar Vadas
   7. Francesco Luigi Gervasio
   8. Matthew W. Bowler

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The manuscript by von Velsen et al. offers valuable structural insights into the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway by providing cryo-EM structures of stabilized MEK1-ERK2 kinase-substrate complexes in inactive, active, and nucleotide-free states, complemented by HDX-MS, SAXS, ITC, crystallography, and molecular dynamics. The work provides solid evidence for the overall architecture of the complex and identifies interaction sites that help explain MAPK pathway specificity. However, some mechanistic conclusions are not yet fully supported, particularly the designation of one state as an active phosphoryl-transfer configuration, the claim that substrate binding releases the MEK1 catalytic machinery, the proposed link to processive phosphorylation, and the extrapolation to disease-associated mutations.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Accumulation of neural state transitions in dorsomedial striatum predicts patch foraging decisions

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Elissa Sutlief
    2. Shichen Zhang
    3. Kate Forsberg
    4. Marshall G Hussain Shuler

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      The authors use a novel patch-leaving task to reveal a reward-reset strategy when mice choose to leave a depleting resource, and find that accumulated step-like activity in the dorsomedial striatum is correlated with the timing of these decisions. These important behavioral and neural findings are supported by substantial and convincing data. Additional control analyses would strengthen the evidence that these signals are specifically related to timing and patch-leaving decisions, rather than alternative task-related processes.

    Reviewed by eLife