eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Human disturbance increases spatiotemporal associations among mountain forest terrestrial mammal species

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Xueyou Li
   2. William V Bleisch
   3. Wenqiang Hu
   4. Quan Li
   5. Hongjiao Wang
   6. Zhongzheng Chen
   7. Ru Bai
   8. Xue-Long Jiang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this study, camera trapping and species distribution models are used to show that human disturbance in mountain forests in the eastern Himalayas pushes medium-sized and large mammal species into narrower habitat space, thus increasing their co-occurrence. While the collected data provide a useful basis for further work, the study presents incomplete evidence to support the claim that increased co-occurrence may indicate positive interactions between species.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Structural and dynamic changes in P-Rex1 upon activation by PIP3 and inhibition by IP4

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Sandeep K Ravala
   2. Sendi Rafael Adame-Garcia
   3. Sheng Li
   4. Chun-Liang Chen
   5. Michael A Cianfrocco
   6. J Silvio Gutkind
   7. Jennifer N Cash
   8. John JG Tesmer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study contributes insights into the regulatory mechanisms of a protein governing cell migration at the membrane. The integration of approaches revealing protein structure and dynamics provides convincing data for a model of regulation and suggests a new allosteric role for a solubilized phospholipid headgroup. The work will be interesting to researchers focusing on signaling mechanisms, cell motility, and cancer metathesis.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. The non-muscle actinopathy-associated mutation E334Q in cytoskeletal γ-actin perturbs interaction of actin filaments with myosin and ADF/cofilin family proteins

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Johannes N Greve
   2. Anja Marquardt
   3. Robin Heiringhoff
   4. Theresia Reindl
   5. Claudia Thiel
   6. Nataliya Di Donato
   7. Manuel H Taft
   8. Dietmar J Manstein

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a valuable characterization of the biochemical consequences of a disease-associated point mutation in a nonmuscle actin. The study uses well-characterized in vitro assays to explore function. The data are convincing and should be helpful to others.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Bacterial vampirism mediated through taxis to serum

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Siena J Glenn
   2. Zealon Gentry-Lear
   3. Michael Shavlik
   4. Michael J Harms
   5. Thomas J Asaki
   6. Arden Baylink

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work uses an interdisciplinary approach combining microfluidics, structural biology, and genetic analyses to provide important findings that show that pathogenic enteric bacteria exhibit taxis toward human serum. The data are compelling and show that the behavior utilizes the bacterial chemotaxis system and the chemoreceptor Tsr, which senses the amino acid L-serine. The work provides an ecological context for the role of serine as a bacterial chemoattractant and could have clinical implications for bacterial bloodstream invasion during episodes of gastrointestinal bleeding.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Enhancing TCR specificity predictions by combined pan- and peptide-specific training, loss-scaling, and sequence similarity integration

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Mathias Fynbo Jensen
   2. Morten Nielsen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a useful tool for predicting TCR specificity with compelling evidence for improvements over prior art. This work/tool will be broadly relevant to computational biologists and immunologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Reduced discrimination between signals of danger and safety but not overgeneralization is linked to exposure to childhood adversity in healthy adults

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens
   2. Katharina Hutterer
   3. Miriam A Schiele
   4. Elisabeth J Leehr
   5. Dirk Schümann
   6. Karoline Rosenkranz
   7. Joscha Böhnlein
   8. Jonathan Repple
   9. Jürgen Deckert
   10. Katharina Domschke
   11. Udo Dannlowski
   12. Ulrike Lueken
   13. Andreas Reif
   14. Marcel Romanos
   15. Peter Zwanzger
   16. Paul Pauli
   17. Matthias Gamer
   18. Tina B Lonsdorf

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study addresses two questions: (i) how danger signaling is altered for people with childhood adversities, and (ii) how this differs across different operationalizations of adversity. The latter is of particularly broad interest to multiple fields, given that childhood adversity is operationalized very differently across the literature. The study provides compelling evidence using a large sample size and rigorous statistical methods. These data will be of interest to scientists and clinicians interested in early life adversity, statistical approaches for quantifying stress exposure, or aversive learning.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. BMP signaling maintains auricular chondrocyte identity and prevents microtia development by inhibiting protein kinase A

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Ruichen Yang
   2. Hongshang Chu
   3. Hua Yue
   4. Yuji Mishina
   5. Zhenlin Zhang
   6. Huijuan Liu
   7. Baojie Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     BMP signaling plays a vital role in skeletal tissues, and the importance of its role in microtia prevention is novel and promising. This important study sheds light on the role of BMP signaling in preventing microtia in the ear, with solid data broadly supporting the claims of the authors.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. The evolution of olfactory sensitivity, preferences, and behavioral responses in Mexican cavefish is influenced by fish personality

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Maryline Blin
   2. Louis Valay
   3. Manon Kuratko
   4. Marie Pavie
   5. Sylvie Rétaux

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this important paper, Blin and colleagues develop a high-throughput behavioral assay to test spontaneous swimming and olfactory preference in individual Mexican cavefish larvae. The authors present compelling evidence that the surface and cave morphs of the fish show different olfactory preferences and odor sensitivities and that individual fish show substantial variability in their spontaneous activity that is relevant for olfactory behaviour. The paper will be of interest to neurobiologists working on the evolution of behaviour, olfaction, and the individuality of behaviour.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Amphibian mast cells serve as barriers to chytrid fungus infections

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Kelsey A Hauser
   2. Christina N Garvey
   3. Ryley S Crow
   4. Muhammad RH Hossainey
   5. Dustin T Howard
   6. Netra Ranganathan
   7. Lindsey K Gentry
   8. Amulya Yaparla
   9. Namarta Kalia
   10. Mira Zelle
   11. Elizabeth J Jones
   12. Anju N Duttargi
   13. Louise A Rollins-Smith
   14. Carly R Muletz-Wolz
   15. Leon Grayfer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study reveals the role of skin-resident mast cells in amphibians in mediating antimicrobial responses. The data are compelling and highlight species-specific biology that can cross-inform human mast cell biology in a species that does not rely on IgE as a primary mechanism for antimicrobial skin responses.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Pigmentation level of human iPSC-derived RPE does not indicate a specific gene expression profile

    This article has 12 authors:

    1. Yoko Nakai-Futatsugi
    2. Jianshi Jin
    3. Taisaku Ogawa
    4. Noriko Sakai
    5. Akiko Maeda
    6. Ken-ichi Hironaka
    7. Masakazu Fukuda
    8. Hiroki Danno
    9. Yuji Tanaka
    10. Seiji Hori
    11. Katsuyuki Shiroguchi
    12. Masayo Takahashi

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This useful work describes a novel microscopy-based method to correlate the degree of pigmentation with the gene expression profile of human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived Retinal Pigmented Epithelial (iPSC-RPE) cells at the single cell level. The presented evidence is solid in showing that there is heterogeneous gene expression in iPSC-derived RPE cells, and there is no significant correlation with the pigmentation. By analyzing the expression of some genes related to function, lysosomal- and complement-related pathways were partially enriched in darker cells. This methodology can be used by other researchers interested in analyzing gene expression related to microscopic images.

    Reviewed by eLife