eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Complete suspension culture of human induced pluripotent stem cells supplemented with suppressors of spontaneous differentiation

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Mami Matsuo-Takasaki
   2. Sho Kambayashi
   3. Yasuko Hemmi
   4. Tamami Wakabayashi
   5. Tomoya Shimizu
   6. Yuri An
   7. Hidenori Ito
   8. Kazuhiro Takeuchi
   9. Masato Ibuki
   10. Terasu Kawashima
   11. Rio Masayasu
   12. Manami Suzuki
   13. Yoshikazu Kawai
   14. Masafumi Umekage
   15. Tomoaki M Kato
   16. Michiya Noguchi
   17. Koji Nakade
   18. Yukio Nakamura
   19. Tomoyuki Nakaishi
   20. Naoki Nishishita
   21. Masayoshi Tsukahara
   22. Yohei Hayashi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This comprehensive and compelling study presents a robust, cost-effective method for expanding pluripotent stem cells. The authors have identified a media condition that maintains iPSCs in suspension cultures by inhibiting the PKCβ and Wnt signaling pathways. The manuscript is important for the pluripotent stem cell field as it seeks robust and economical approaches to expand iPSCs at scale for high throughput screens and preclinical studies. While the authors have tested their media and protocol on a few lines, given the variability of iPSCs, further testing across more cell lines and in different laboratory settings will be crucial to evaluate its reproducibility.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Membrane-bound O-acyltransferase 7 (MBOAT7) shapes lysosomal lipid homeostasis and function to control alcohol-associated liver injury

   This article has 24 authors:

   1. Venkateshwari Varadharajan
   2. Iyappan Ramachandiran
   3. William J Massey
   4. Raghav Jain
   5. Rakhee Banerjee
   6. Anthony J Horak
   7. Megan R McMullen
   8. Emily Huang
   9. Annette Bellar
   10. Shuhui W Lorkowski
   11. Kailash Gulshan
   12. Robert N Helsley
   13. Isabella James
   14. Vai Pathak
   15. Jaividhya Dasarathy
   16. Nicole Welch
   17. Srinivasan Dasarathy
   18. David Streem
   19. Ofer Reizes
   20. Daniela S Allende
   21. Jonathan D Smith
   22. Judith Simcox
   23. Laura E Nagy
   24. J Mark Brown

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Varadharajan et al. explore the mechanistic basis of MBOAT7 SNP association with steatotic liver disease and link its function in LPI acylation to altered lipidomics of endosomal/lysosomal system and impaired TFEB mediated lysosomal biogenesis. The findings are important with theoretical and practical implications in MAFLD, alcohol-induced hepatic steatosis, and lysosomal diseases. The strength of evidence is convincing using methodology in line with current state-of-the-art.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. A high-throughput platform for single-molecule tracking identifies drug interaction and cellular mechanisms

   This article has 30 authors:

   1. David Trombley McSwiggen
   2. Helen Liu
   3. Ruensern Tan
   4. Sebastia Agramunt Puig
   5. Lakshmi B Akella
   6. Russell Berman
   7. Mason Bretan
   8. Hanzhe Chen
   9. Xavier Darzacq
   10. Kelsey Ford
   11. Ruth Godbey
   12. Eric Gonzalez
   13. Adi Hanuka
   14. Alec Heckert
   15. Jaclyn J Ho
   16. Stephanie L Johnson
   17. Reed Kelso
   18. Aaron Klammer
   19. Ruchira Krishnamurthy
   20. Jifu Li
   21. Kevin Lin
   22. Brian Margolin
   23. Patrick McNamara
   24. Laurence Meyer
   25. Sarah E Pierce
   26. Akshay Sule
   27. Connor Stashko
   28. Yangzhong Tang
   29. Daniel J Anderson
   30. Hilary P Beck

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work presents an important technological advance, in the form of a high throughput platform for Single Particle Tracking allowing us to measure millions of cells and thousands of compounds per day. Analysis of the diffusional behaviour of fluorescently-tagged targets permits the identification of, and differentiation between, small molecules that bind directly or affect the target indirectly. The methodology and metrics employed are compelling, leading to the identification of multiple compounds that effectively change the diffusive state of the estrogen receptor, the POC target of the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Extramacrochaetae regulates Notch signaling in the Drosophila eye through non-apoptotic caspase activity

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Sudershana Nair
   2. Nicholas E Baker

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work presents data showing that all non-proneural phenotypes of the Inhibitor of DNA binding (Id) protein Emc are mediated through inappropriate nonapoptotic caspase activity. Using the developing Drosophila retina as a model the authors show that Emc acts by transcriptionally regulating the Death-Associated Inhibitor of Apoptosis 1 (diap1) gene, which impacts on Notch signaling by caspase-dependent increase of Delta protein. These are compelling findings, interesting for the caspase/apoptosis field as they add more non-apoptotic functions of caspases to the list, as well as for the Id field, which examines how Id proteins inhibit cell differentiation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Expression of modified FcγRI enables myeloid cells to elicit robust tumor-specific cytotoxicity

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Leen Farhat-Younis
   2. Manho Na
   3. Amichai Zarfin
   4. Aseel Khateeb
   5. Nadine Santana-Magal
   6. Alon Richter
   7. Amit Gutwillig
   8. Diana Rasoulouniriana
   9. Annette Gleiberman
   10. Lir Beck
   11. Tamar Giger
   12. Avraham Ashkenazi
   13. Adi Barzel
   14. Peleg Rider
   15. Yaron Carmi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The findings are fundamental for understanding IgM signaling in myeloid cells. The work is compelling in its ability to manipulate and harness myeloid cells to further anti-tumor immunity.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A scenario for an evolutionary selection of ageing

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Tristan Roget
   2. Claire Macmurray
   3. Pierre Jolivet
   4. Sylvie Meleard
   5. Michael Rera

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Through a theoretical approach, this study makes important contributions to our understanding of the evolutionary causes of the ageing process. Using a simple individual-based model and computational simulations, the authors provide convincing evidence that ageing can be a trait under natural selection, opening the door for further discussion in the context of lifespan extension research.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Language experience shapes predictive coding of rhythmic sound sequences

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Piermatteo Morucci
   2. Sanjeev Nara
   3. Mikel Lizarazu
   4. Clara Martin
   5. Nicola Molinaro

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents important observations about how the human brain uses long-term priors (acquired during our lifetime of listening) to make predictions about expected sounds - an open question in the field of predictive processing. The evidence presented is solid and based on state-of-the-art statistical analysis, but limited by a relatively low N and low magnitude for the interaction effect.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Mapping the molecular motions of 5-HT3 serotonin-gated channel by voltage-clamp fluorometry

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Laurie Peverini
   2. Sophie Shi
   3. Karima Medjebeur
   4. Pierre-Jean Corringer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study applies voltage clamp fluorometry to provide new information about the function of serotonin-gated ion channels 5-HT3AR. The authors convincingly investigate structural changes inside and outside the orthosteric site elicited by agonists, partial agonists, and antagonists, helping to annotate existing cryo-EM structures. This work confirms that the activation of 5-HT3 receptors is similar to other members of this well-studied receptor superfamily. The work will be of interest to scientists working on channel biophysics but also drug development targeting ligand-gated ion channels.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Mapping the molecular motions of 5-HT3 serotonin-gated channel by voltage-clamp fluorometry

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Laurie Peverini
   2. Sophie Shi
   3. Karima Medjebeur
   4. Pierre-Jean Corringer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study applies voltage clamp fluorometry to provide new information about the function of serotonin-gated ion channels 5-HT3AR. The authors convincingly investigate structural changes inside and outside the orthosteric site elicited by agonists, partial agonists, and antagonists, helping to annotate existing cryo-EM structures. This work confirms that the activation of 5-HT3 receptors is similar to other members of this well-studied receptor superfamily. The work will be of interest to scientists working on channel biophysics but also drug development targeting ligand-gated ion channels.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Predicting the effect of CRISPR-Cas9-based epigenome editing

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Sanjit Singh Batra
    2. Alan Cabrera
    3. Jeffrey P. Spence
    4. Jacob Goell
    5. Selvalakshmi S. Anand
    6. Isaac B. Hilton
    7. Yun S. Song

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study presents an advance in efforts to use histone post-translational modification (PTM) data to model gene expression and predict epigenetic editing activity. Such models are broadly useful to the research community, especially ones that can model epigenetic editing activity, which is novel; additionally, the authors have nicely integrated datasets across cell types into their model. The work is mostly solid, but it would be strengthened by performing rigorous comparisons to existing methods that predict gene expression from PTM data and from additional model validation beyond dCas9-p300 based perturbations.

    Reviewed by eLife