eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Discovery of runs-of-homozygosity diplotype clusters and their associations with diseases in UK Biobank

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Ardalan Naseri
   2. Degui Zhi
   3. Shaojie Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study is of potential interest to readers in human genetics and quantitative genetics, as it presents a new method for homozygosity mapping in population-scale datasets, based on an innovative computational algorithm that efficiently identifies runs-of-homozygosity (ROH) segments shared by many individuals. Although the method is innovative and has the potential to be broadly useful, its power and limitations have not yet been adequately evaluated. The application of this new method to the UK Biobank dataset identifies several interesting associations, but it remains currently unclear under what conditions the new approach can provide additional power over existing genome-wide association study methods.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Neuropilin-1 controls vascular permeability through juxtacrine regulation of endothelial adherens junctions

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Sagnik Pal
   2. Yangyang Su
   3. Emmanuel Nwadozi
   4. Lena Claesson-Welsh
   5. Mark Richards

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study is focused on the question of how Nrp1 contributes to the regulation of vascular permeability and whether or why there are differences between different vascular beds. The scientific concept of this paper suggests a possible role of Nrp1 on perivascular cells as a participant in the regulation of vascular permeability. This concept is interesting and potentially useful. However, the methodology and quantitative analysis are currently inadequate to fully support the claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. The French flag problem revisited: Creating robust and tunable axial patterns without global signaling

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Stephan Kremser
   2. Gabriel Vercelli
   3. Ulrich Gerland

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study uses cellular automata and evolution algorithms to offer an alternative to long-range signalling models of developmental patterning. The computational evidence that local rules suffice to produce a robust and global pattern is convincing. With some additional insights that connect the theoretical findings back to real biological examples, this work could be of interest to the broad community of developmental and systems biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. In mice, discrete odors can selectively promote the neurogenesis of sensory neuron subtypes that they stimulate

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Kawsar Hossain
   2. Madeline Smith
   3. Karlin E Rufenacht
   4. Rebecca O'Rourke
   5. Stephen W Santoro

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides valuable insights into the role of sensory stimulation in neurogenesis in the mammalian olfactory epithelium, where new olfactory sensory neurons are continually born throughout an animal's lifespan. The authors show that exposure to two different musk-related odors specifically increases the birth rates of those neurons that respond to these odors. This potentially results in adaptive changes in the subtype composition of the olfactory sensory neuron population. Solid evidence, well supported by control experiments, is presented to support these findings, though further work is needed to confirm that this phenomenon generalizes to olfactory sensory neurons expressing other types of odorant receptor and to explore the mechanisms underlying the stimulus specificity of neurogenesis.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Cardiac afferent signals can facilitate visual dominance in binocular rivalry

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. John P Veillette
   2. Fan Gao
   3. Howard C Nusbaum

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is a binocular rivalry study that uses ECG to present visual stimuli pulsing in line with cardiac events, to examine whether systole-entrained stimuli (i.e. presented during the period where the heart has contracted) are suppressed within visual awareness. Arguably out of line with this idea, the dominance durations were increased for systole-entrained stimuli. The manuscript addresses an important, precisely defined, and theoretically well-motivated question using sophisticated experimental and statistical methods. The interpretation of these results is not straightforward, however, such that they currently only provide incomplete support for the claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Male cuticular pheromones stimulate removal of the mating plug and promote re-mating through pC1 neurons in Drosophila females

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Minsik Yun
   2. Do-Hyoung Kim
   3. Tal Soo Ha
   4. Kang-Min Lee
   5. Eungyu Park
   6. Markus Knaden
   7. Bill S Hansson
   8. Young-Joon Kim

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important work unravels how female Drosophila can assess their social context via chemosensory cues and modulate the sperm storage process after copulation accordingly. A compelling set of rigorous experiments uncovers specific pheromones that influence the excitability of the female brain receptivity circuit and their propensity to discard inseminate from a mating. This insight into neuronal mechanisms of sexual behavior plasticity is of general interest to scientists working in the fields of animal behavior, neuroscience, evolution, and sexual selection, as well as insect chemosensation and reproduction.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Astrocyte aquaporin mediates a tonic water efflux maintaining brain homeostasis

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Cuong Pham
   2. Yuji Komaki
   3. Anna Deàs-Just
   4. Benjamin Le Gac
   5. Christine Mouffle
   6. Clara Franco
   7. Agnès Chaperon
   8. Vincent Vialou
   9. Tomokazu Tsurugizawa
   10. Bruno Cauli
   11. Dongdong Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this work, the authors propose that astrocytic aquaporin 4 (AQP4) is the main pathway for tonic water efflux, without which astrocytes undergo cell swelling. These findings are important, because they shed light on key molecular mechanisms implicated with the regulation of brain water homeostasis. The authors use a broad set of experimental tools (e.g., acute brain slices, in vivo recording, and diffusion-weighted MRI) but the evidence remains incomplete without ruling out non-specific effects of TGN-020, and without evidence that changes in sulforhodamine B fluorescence can be used as reliable readouts of cell volume dynamics.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. DNA methylome regulates virulence and metabolism in Pseudomonas syringae

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Jiadai Huang
   2. Fang Chen
   3. Beifang Lu
   4. Yue Sun
   5. Youyue Li
   6. Canfeng Hua
   7. Xin Deng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study presents findings on DNA methylation as an efficient epigenetic transcriptional regulating strategy in bacteria. The authors utilized single-molecule real-time sequencing to profile the DNA methylation landscape across three model pathovars of Pseudomonas syringae, identifying significant epigenetic mechanisms through the Type-I restriction-modification system, which includes a conserved sequence motif associated with N6-methyladenine. The evidence presented is solid and the study provides novel insights into the epigenetic mechanisms of P. syringae, expanding the understanding of bacterial pathogenicity and adaptation.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Stratification of viral shedding patterns in saliva of COVID-19 patients

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Hyeongki Park
   2. Yoshimura Raiki
   3. Shoya Iwanami
   4. Kwangsu Kim
   5. Keisuke Ejima
   6. Naotoshi Nakamura
   7. Kazuyuki Aihara
   8. Yoshitsugu Miyazaki
   9. Takashi Umeyama
   10. Ken Miyazawa
   11. Takeshi Morita
   12. Koichi Watashi
   13. Christopher B Brooke
   14. Ruian Ke
   15. Shingo Iwami
   16. Taiga Miyazaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work attempts to understand observed variability in oral shedding of SARS-CoV-2 and suggests that routine clinical factors are not determinative. The evidence supporting the conclusion is solid though the limited clinical heterogeneity of the included cohorts, the lack of COVID vaccination, and the absence of comprehensive viral load data for model training, makes the results difficult to generalize to contemporaneous COVID-19 conditions. This study may be of interest to virologists, public health officials and clinicians.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Explaining the counter-intuitive effectiveness of trophectoderm biopsy for PGT-A using computational modelling

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Benjamin M Skinner
    2. Manuel Viotti
    3. International Registry of Mosaic Embryo Transfers (IRMET)
    4. Darren K Griffin
    5. Peter JI Ellis

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This study presents a valuable computational model for elaborating on the interpretation of chromosomal mosaicism in preimplantation embryos. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is incomplete due to the assumption that is possible to quantify the cells in the embryo, oversimplification of mitotic errors, and the inclusion of the self-correction premise. The work will be of interest to embryologists, and geneticists working on reproductive medicine.

    Reviewed by eLife