eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Tissue-specific O-GlcNAcylation profiling identifies substrates in translational machinery in Drosophila mushroom body contributing to olfactory learning

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Haibin Yu
   2. Dandan Liu
   3. Yaowen Zhang
   4. Ruijun Tang
   5. Xunan Fan
   6. Song Mao
   7. Lu Lv
   8. Fang Chen
   9. Hongtao Qin
   10. Zhuohua Zhang
   11. Daan MF van Aalten
   12. Bing Yang
   13. Kai Yuan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work describes a valuable new technique involving proximity labelling to identify Drosophila proteins modified by GlcNAcylation in subsets of cells in vivo. A solid set of experiments shows that several ribosomal proteins are modified in the fly mushroom body. Consistent with a role for GlcNAcylation of ribosomal proteins in control of memory related translational control, the authors show that perturbation of GlcNAc modification in KCs prevents efficient consolidation of long-term memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A novel mouse model for LAMA2-related muscular dystrophy with analysis of molecular pathogenesis and clinical phenotype

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Dandan Tan
   2. Yidan Liu
   3. Huaxia Luo
   4. Qiang Shen
   5. Xingbo Long
   6. Luzheng Xu
   7. Jieyu Liu
   8. Nanbert A Zhong
   9. Hong Zhang
   10. Hui Xiong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful manuscript reports on a new mouse model for LAMA2-MD, a rare but very severe congenital muscular dystrophy. The knockout mice were generated by removing exon3 in the Lama2 gene, which results in a frameshift in exon4 and a premature stop codon. These animals lack any laminin-alpha2 protein and confirm results from previous Lama2 knockout models. Additionally, this study includes weak transcriptomics data that might be a good resource for the field. However, experimental evidence, methods, and data analyses supporting the main claims of the manuscript are incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Excitatory neurons in stratum radiatum provide an alternative pathway for excitation flow that escapes perisomatic inhibition

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Julia Lebedeva
   2. David Jappy
   3. Azat Nasretdinov
   4. Alina Vazetdinova
   5. Viktoria Krut
   6. Rostislav Sokolov
   7. Yulia Dobryakova
   8. Marina Eliava
   9. Valery Grinevich
   10. Andrei Rozov

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work addresses the connectivity of giant excitatory neurons in a part of CA1 of the hippocampus. Recordings in rat brain slices provide new evidence that these cells excite bistratified and basket inhibitory neurons, and have weak inhibitory input from basket cells, as well as other findings. This circuitry gives these cells unique potential, making the work valuable, however the strength of the evidence is currently incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Secreted antigen A peptidoglycan hydrolase is essential for Enterococcus faecium cell separation and priming of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Steven Klupt
   2. Kyong Tkhe Fam
   3. Xing Zhang
   4. Pavan Kumar Chodisetti
   5. Abeera Mehmood
   6. Tumara Boyd
   7. Danielle Grotjahn
   8. Donghyun Park
   9. Howard C Hang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors build upon prior data implicating the secreted peptidoglycan hydrolase SagA produced by Enterococcus faecium in immunotherapy. Leveraging new strains with sagA deletion/complementation constructs, the investigators reveal that sagA is non-essential, with sagA deletion leading to a marked growth defect due to impaired cell division, and sagA being necessary for the immunogenic and anti-tumor effects of E. faecium. In aggregate, the study utilizes compelling methods to provide both fundamental new insights into E. faecium biology and host interactions and a proof-of-concept for identifying the bacterial effectors of immunotherapy response.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The genetic architecture of the load linked to dominant and recessive self-incompatibility alleles in Arabidopsis halleri and Arabidopsis lyrata

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Audrey Le Veve
   2. Mathieu Genete
   3. Christelle Lepers-Blassiau
   4. Chloé Ponitzki
   5. Céline Poux
   6. Xavier Vekemans
   7. Eleonore Durand
   8. Vincent Castric

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents valuable empirical work and simulations that are relevant for the evolution of genetic load linked to self-incompatibility alleles in two Arabidopsis species. The evidence supporting the findings is solid, although it remains to be seen how generalizable the conclusions are beyond the specific system investigated here, not least because the statistical significance varied between the two species. The work will be of relevance to geneticists interested in the evolution of allelic diversity in similar systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Glial ferritin maintains neural stem cells via transporting iron required for self-renewal in Drosophila

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Zhixin Ma
   2. Wenshu Wang
   3. Xiaojing Yang
   4. Menglong Rui
   5. Su Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study, which seeks to identify factors from the glial niche that support and maintain neural stem cells, reports a novel role for ferritin in this process. The authors provide solid evidence that defects in larval brain development in Drosophila, resulting from ferritin knockdown, can be attributed to impaired Fe-S cluster activity and ATP production. The findings of this well-conducted study will be of interest to oncologists and neurobiologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. A statistical framework for analysis of trial-level temporal dynamics in fiber photometry experiments

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Gabriel Loewinger
   2. Erjia Cui
   3. David Lovinger
   4. Francisco Pereira

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a statistical framework for the analysis of photometry signals and provides an open-source implementation. The evidence supporting the benefits of the presented functional mixed-effect modeling analysis as opposed to 1) summary statistics and 2) other pointwise regression models is convincing with a thorough comparison with other methods and datasets. This work will be of great interest to researchers using not only fiber photometry, but other time-series data such as calcium imaging or electrophysiology data, and wanting to implement trial-by-trial temporal analysis, taking also into account variability within the dataset.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Intrinsic dynamics of randomly clustered networks generate place fields and preplay of novel environments

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jordan Breffle
   2. Hannah Germaine
   3. Justin D Shin
   4. Shantanu P Jadhav
   5. Paul Miller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents an important finding on the spontaneous emergence of structured activity in artificial neural networks endowed with specific connectivity profiles. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing, providing direct comparison between the properties of the model and neural data although investigating more naturalistic inputs to the network would have strengthened the main claims. The work will be of interest to systems and computational neuroscientists studying the hippocampus and memory processes.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. PKA regulation of neuronal function requires the dissociation of catalytic subunits from regulatory subunits

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Weihong Xiong
   2. Maozhen Qin
   3. Haining Zhong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important paper demonstrates that different PKA subtypes exhibit distinct subcellular localization at rest in CA1 neurons. The authors provide compelling evidence that when all tested PKA subtypes are activated by norepinephrine, catalytic subunits translocate to dendritic spines but regulatory subunits remain unmoved. Furthermore, PKA-dependent regulation of synaptic plasticity and transmission can be supported only by wildtype, dissociable PKA, but not by inseparable PKA.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Heron, a Knowledge Graph editor for intuitive implementation of Python-based experimental pipelines

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. George Dimitriadis
    2. Ella Svahn
    3. Andrew F MacAskill
    4. Athena Akrami

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable paper introduces Heron, lightweight scientific software that is designed to streamline the implementation of complex experimental pipelines. The software is tailored for workflows that require coordinating many logical steps across interconnected hardware components with heterogeneous computing environments. The authors convincingly demonstrate Heron's utility and effectiveness in the context of behavioral experiments, addressing a growing need among experimentalists for flexible and scalable solutions that accommodate diverse and evolving hardware requirements.

    Reviewed by eLife