eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Rudhira-mediated microtubule stability controls TGFβ signaling during mouse vascular development

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Divyesh Joshi
   2. Preeti Jindal
   3. Ronak K Shetty
   4. Maneesha S Inamdar

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work provides another layer of regulatory mechanism for TGF-beta signaling activity. The evidence convincingly supports the involvement of microtubules as a reservoir of Smad2/3, and association of Rudhira with microtubules is critical for this process. The work will be of board interest to developmental biologists in general and molecular biologists in the field of growth factor signaling.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Conditional Survival and Nomogram for Elderly Non-Metastatic Colon Cancer Patients Following Colectomy

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Yadong Gao
   2. Huimin Wang
   3. Yi Zhang
   4. Jing Zhao
   5. Sujuan Feng
   6. Jianwei Qiu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This useful work provides a risk-prediction tool, in the form of a nomogram, for practitioners and elderly patients with non-metastatic colon cancer using data from the SEER registry. The unique contribution of this work is the focus on conditional survival. However, the underlying statistical approach is suboptimal and therefore incomplete, which substantially lessens the potential impact of this work. The analysis could use a more rigorous consideration of competing risks.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. NPRL2 gene therapy induces effective antitumor immunity in KRAS/STK11 mutant anti-PD1 resistant metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in a humanized mouse model

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Ismail M Meraz
   2. Mourad Majidi
   3. Renduo Song
   4. Feng Meng
   5. Lihui Gao
   6. Qi Wang
   7. Jing Wang
   8. Elizabeth J Shpall
   9. Jack A Roth

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides a novel and promising NPRL2 gene therapy for enhanced immunotherapy response in a KRAS/STK11 mutant anti-PD1 resistant metastatic NSCLC humanized mouse model. Overall, the authors presented a large amount of convincing in vivo data to demonstrate that NPRL2 gene therapy induces antitumor activity through DC-mediated antigen presentation and cytotoxic immune cell activation. This work will be of interest and useful to medical biologists and oncologists in the research field of KRAS-mutant NSCLC.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Timing of treatment shapes the path to androgen receptor signaling inhibitor resistance in prostate cancer

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Eugine Lee
   2. Zeda Zhang
   3. Chi-Chao Chen
   4. Danielle Choi
   5. Aura C. Agudelo Rivera
   6. Eliot Linton
   7. Yu-jui Ho
   8. Jillian Love
   9. Justin LaClair
   10. John Wongvipat
   11. Charles L. Sawyers

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study provides new insight into the dynamics that underlie the development of therapy resistance in prostate cancer by revealing that divergent tumor evolutionary paths occur in response to different treatment timing and that these converge on common resistance mechanisms. The use of barcoded lineage tracing and characterization of isolated tumor clonal populations provides compelling evidence supporting the importance of clonal dynamics in a tumor ecosystem for treatment resistance. Several open questions remain, however, raising the possibility of alternative interpretations of the data set in its current form. Overall, the findings deepen our understanding of prostate cancer evolution and hold promising implications for how drug resistance can be addressed or prevented.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Partitioning changes in ecosystem productivity by effects of species interactions in biodiversity experiments

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Jing Tao
   2. Charles A Nock
   3. Eric B Searle
   4. Shongming Huang
   5. Rongzhou Man
   6. Hua Yang
   7. Grégoire T Freschet
   8. Cyrille Violle
   9. Ji Zheng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors propose that positive biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships found in experiments have been exaggerated because commonly used statistical analyses are flawed. To remedy this, a new type of analysis based on a concept of "partial density monoculture yield" is proposed. However, the presented concept and analysis methods are not reproducibly described (how can partial density monoculture yield experimentally be assessed?), do not appear to be complete, and are inadequate for hypothesis testing. The reviewers found that the authors misinterpret current research in the field and made limited efforts to understand or address the reviewer comments about this study.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Sex-dependent, lateralized engagement of anterior insular cortex inputs to the dorsolateral striatum in binge alcohol drinking

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. David L Haggerty
   2. Brady K Atwood

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable manuscript describes evidence of sex differences in specific corticostriatal projections during alcohol consumption, and this is noteworthy given the increasing rates/levels of drinking in females and their liability for Alcohol Use disorder. The authors provide solid evidence of the lateralisation of the activity of the circuit, but other evidence is incomplete, particularly with regard to how the drinking measure relates to intoxication. There are some inconsistencies that make it difficult to reconcile the photometry and behavioral data. The findings would benefit from causal assessment in the future. The findings will be of interest to researchers investigating functional circuitry underlying alcohol-driven behaviors.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Novel mechanism for tubular injury in nephropathic cystinosis

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Swastika Sur
   2. Maggie Kerwin
   3. Silvia Pineda
   4. Poonam Sansanwal
   5. Tara K Sigdel
   6. Marina Sirota
   7. Minnie M Sarwal

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study addresses the idea that defective lysosomal clearance might be causal to renal dysfunction in cystinosis. With mostly solid data, the authors observe that restoring expression of vATPase subunits and treatment with Astaxanthin ameliorate mitochondrial function in a model of renal epithelial cells, opening opportunities for translational application to humans.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Neural mechanisms of learned suppression uncovered by probing the hidden attentional priority map

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Changrun Huang
   2. Dirk van Moorselaar
   3. Joshua Foster
   4. Mieke Donk
   5. Jan Theeuwes

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study uses recently developed EEG analysis methods to investigate spatial distractor suppression in a combined visual search/working memory task. The reported results are compelling, although they are open to multiple interpretations. The study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists working on visual attention and memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Microtubule networks in zebrafish hair cells facilitate presynapse transport and fusion during development

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Saman Hussain
   2. Katherine Pinter
   3. Mara Uhl
   4. Hiu-Tung Wong
   5. Katie S Kindt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study provides new insights into the maturation of ribbon synapses in zebrafish neuromast hair cells. Live-cell imaging and pharmacological and genetic manipulations together provide compelling evidence that the formation of this synaptic organelle is a dynamic process involving the fusion of presynaptic elements and microtubule transport, though the evidence that ribbon precursors move in a directed motion toward the active zone is less persuasive. These findings will be of interest to neuroscientists studying synapse formation and function and should inspire further research into the molecular basis for synaptic ribbon maturation.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. The recurrent temporal restricted Boltzmann machine captures neural assembly dynamics in whole-brain activity

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Sebastian Quiroz Monnens
    2. Casper Peters
    3. Luuk Willem Hesselink
    4. Kasper Smeets
    5. Bernhard Englitz

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study introduces a useful extension to a recently proposed model of neural assembly activity. The extension was to add recurrent connections to the hidden units of the Restricted Boltzmann Machine. The authors show solid evidence that the new model outperforms their earlier model on both a simulated dataset and on whole-brain neural activity from zebrafish.

    Reviewed by eLife