eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Structure, function and assembly of soybean primary cell wall cellulose synthases

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Ruoya Ho
   2. Pallinti Purushotham
   3. Louis FL Wilson
   4. Yueping Wan
   5. Jochen Zimmer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     It is well established that cellulose synthesis in higher plants requires three different but related catalytic subunits known as CESA proteins. Here the authors provide cryo electron microscopy structural information on soybean CESA1, CESA3, and CESA6 and find substantial differences between the structure of these CESA homotrimers and the previously-resolved secondary cell wall CESAs. They present an important model with convincing evidence in which the multi-subunit cellulose synthase complexes are made of multiple homotrimers.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Noncaloric monosaccharides induce excessive sprouting angiogenesis in zebrafish via foxo1a-marcksl1a signal

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Xiaoning Wang
   2. Jinxiang Zhao
   3. Jiehuan Xu
   4. Bowen Li
   5. Xia Liu
   6. Gangcai Xie
   7. Xuchu Duan
   8. Dong Liu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study investigates the effect of noncaloric monosaccharides, sugar substitutes that are commonly used by diabetic patients, on angiogenesis in the zebrafish embryo. The authors show that noncaloric monosaccharides and glucose similarly induce excessive blood vessel formation due to the increased formation of tip cells by endothelial cells through the foxo1a-marcksl1a pathway. This solid study is of interest for the medical community in charge of the prevention and of the treatment of diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Robust estimation of cancer and immune cell-type proportions from bulk tumor ATAC-Seq data

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Aurélie Anne-Gaëlle Gabriel
   2. Julien Racle
   3. Maryline Falquet
   4. Camilla Jandus
   5. David Gfeller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents an important computational tool for the quantification of the cellular composition of human tissues profiled with ATAC-seq. The methodology and its application results on breast cancer tumor tissues are convincing. It advances existing methods by utilizing a comprehensive reference profile for major cancer-relevant cell types, compatible with a widely-used cell type deconvolution tool.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. A Deep Learning Pipeline for Mapping in situ Network-level Neurovascular Coupling in Multi-photon Fluorescence Microscopy

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Matthew Rozak
   2. James Mester
   3. Ahmadreza Attarpour
   4. Adrienne Dorr
   5. Shruti Patel
   6. Margaret Koletar
   7. Mary Hill
   8. JoAnne McLaurin
   9. Maged Goubran
   10. Bojana Stefanovic

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study describes a highly complex automated algorithm for analyzing vascular imaging data from two-photon microscopy. The proposed tool has the potential to be extremely valuable to the field and to fill gaps in knowledge of hemodynamic activity across a regional network. The biological application provided, however, has several problems that make many of the scientific claims in the paper incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Single-cell RNA sequencing of iPSC-derived brain organoids reveals Treponema pallidum infection inhibiting neurodevelopment

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Qiu-Yan Xu
   2. Yong-Jing Wang
   3. Yun He
   4. Xin-Qi Zheng
   5. Man-Li Tong
   6. Yu Lin
   7. Tian-Ci Yang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is a valuable study that describes the effects of T. pallidum on neural development by applying single-cell RNA sequencing to an iPSC-derived brain organoid model. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although further evidence to understand the differences in infection rates would strengthen the conclusions of the study. In particular, the conclusions would be strengthened by validating infection efficiency as this can impact the interpretation of single-cell sequencing results, and how these metrics affect organoid size as well as comparison with additional infectious agents. Furthermore, additional functional validations of downstream effectors could be insightful.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Sensitivity to vocal emotions emerges in newborns at 37 weeks gestational age

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Xinlin Hou
   2. Peng Zhang
   3. Licheng Mo
   4. Cheng Peng
   5. Dandan Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important study on changes in newborns' neural abilities to distinguish auditory signals at 37 weeks of gestation. The evidence of change in neural discrimination as a function of gestational age is convincing, but, as the authors acknowledge, further control of the acoustic signals and infants' language environment is necessary for the results to be used in clinical applications. The work contributes to the field of neurodevelopment.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. A metabolic modeling-based framework for predicting trophic dependencies in native rhizobiomes of crop plants

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Alon Avraham Ginatt
   2. Maria Berihu
   3. Einam Castel
   4. Shlomit Medina
   5. Gon Carmi
   6. Adi Faigenboim-Doron
   7. Itai Sharon
   8. Ofir Tal
   9. Samir Droby
   10. Tracey Somera
   11. Mark Mazzola
   12. Hanan Eizenberg
   13. Shiri Freilich

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     By developing a framework to integrate metagenomic and metabolomic data with genome-scale metabolic models, this study establishes a toolkit to investigate trophic interactions between microbiota members in situ. The authors apply this method to the native rhizosphere bacterial communities of apple rootstocks, producing solid evidence and numerous detailed hypotheses on specific trophic exchanges and resource dependencies. The framework represents a valuable method to disentangle features of microbial interaction networks and will be of interest to microbiome scientists as well as plant and computational biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Single-cell eQTL mapping in yeast reveals a tradeoff between growth and reproduction

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. James Boocock
   2. Noah Alexander
   3. Leslie Alamo Tapia
   4. Laura Walter-McNeill
   5. Shivani Prashant Patel
   6. Chetan Munugala
   7. Joshua S Bloom
   8. Leonid Kruglyak

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript describes the mapping of natural DNA sequence variants that affect gene expression and its noise, as well as cell cycle timing, using as input single-cell RNA-sequencing of progeny from crosses between wild yeast strains. The method represents an important advance in the study of natural genetic variation. The findings, especially given the follow-up validation of the phenotypic impact of a mapped locus of major effect, provide convincing support for the rigor and utility of the method.

   Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

9. N-cadherin directs the collective Schwann cell migration required for nerve regeneration through Slit2/3-mediated contact inhibition of locomotion

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Julian JA Hoving
   2. Elizabeth Harford-Wright
   3. Patrick Wingfield-Digby
   4. Anne-Laure Cattin
   5. Mariana Campana
   6. Alex Power
   7. Toby Morgan
   8. Erica Torchiaro
   9. Victor Quereda
   10. Alison C Lloyd

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents an interesting set of findings that connects N-cadherin and glypican-4 to Slit signaling during the regulation of contact inhibition of locomotion of Schwann cells in culture. Solid evidence is provided showing that N-cadherin not only regulates cell recognition but also proper trafficking of Slit to the cell surface. An ex-vivo model demonstrates the importance of Slit signaling during cell migration but the molecular details of how N-cadherin traffics Slit to the surface and role of glypican are unclear. The data would have been strengthened with a similar interrogation of N-cadherin in this system. The work will be of interest to cell biologists studying the mechanisms behind peripheral nervous system regeneration.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Cbfβ regulates Wnt/β-catenin, Hippo/Yap, and Tgfβ signaling pathways in articular cartilage homeostasis and protects from ACLT surgery-induced osteoarthritis

    This article has 12 authors:

    1. Wei Chen
    2. Yun Lu
    3. Yan Zhang
    4. Jinjin Wu
    5. Abigail McVicar
    6. Yilin Chen
    7. Siyu Zhu
    8. Guochun Zhu
    9. You Lu
    10. Jiayang Zhang
    11. Matthew McConnell
    12. Yi-Ping Li

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This fundamental work advances our understanding of the role of Cbfβ in maintaining articular cartilage homeostasis and the underlying mechanisms. The evidence supporting the conclusion is mostly convincing, although including additional experiments and discussions would have strengthened the study. This paper is of potential interest to skeletal biologists and orthopaedic surgeons who study the pathogenesis and the therapeutics of osteoarthritis.

    Reviewed by eLife