eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Mapping responses to focal injections of bicuculline in the lateral parafacial region identifies core regions for maximal generation of active expiration

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Annette Pisanski
   2. Mitchell Prostebby
   3. Clayton T Dickson
   4. Silvia Pagliardini

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript presents experiments that address the question of whether the lateral parafacial area (pFL) is active in controlling active expiration, which is particularly significant in patient populations that rely on active exhalation to maintain breathing (eg, COPD, ALS, muscular dystrophy). This study presents solid evidence for a valuable finding of pharmacological mapping of the core medullary region that contributes to active expiration and addresses the question of where these regions lie anatomically. Results from these experiments will be of value to those interested in the neural control of breathing and other neuroscientists as a framework for how to perform pharmacological mapping experiments in the future.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Predictably manipulating photoreceptor light responses to reveal their role in downstream visual responses

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Qiang Chen
   2. Norianne T Ingram
   3. Jacob Baudin
   4. Juan M Angueyra
   5. Raunak Sinha
   6. Fred Rieke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper provides an important method that uses a computational model to predict photoreceptor currents in mammalian photoreceptors. By inverting the model, visual stimuli can be constructed to produce desired photoreceptor current responses. The authors provide compelling evidence that this approach can disentangle the effects of photoreceptor nonlinearities including light adaptation from downstream nonlinear processing, thus facilitating future studies of the higher visual system.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Visual homogeneity computations in the brain enable solving property-based visual tasks

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Georgin Jacob
   2. RT Pramod
   3. SP Arun

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study uses carefully designed experiments to generate a useful behavioural and neuroimaging dataset on visual cognition. The results provide solid evidence for the involvement of higher-order visual cortex in processing visual oddballs and asymmetry. However, the evidence provided for the very strong claims of homogeneity as a novel concept in vision science, separable from existing concepts such as target saliency, is incomplete. The authors and the reviewers do not agree on several points, which are explained in the reviews and author response.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Enkephalin-mediated modulation of basal somatic sensitivity by regulatory T cells in mice

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Nicolas Aubert
   2. Madeleine Purcarea
   3. Julien Novarino
   4. Julien Schopp
   5. Alexis Audibert
   6. Wangtianrui Li
   7. Marie Fornier
   8. Léonie Cagnet
   9. Marie Naturel
   10. Armanda Casrouge
   11. Marie-Caroline Dieu-Nosjean
   12. Nicolas Blanchard
   13. Gilles Dietrich
   14. Cedric Peirs
   15. Gilles Marodon

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding on a new role of Foxp3+ regulatory T cells in sensory perception, which may have an impact on our understanding of somatosensory perception. The authors identified a previously unappreciated action of enkephalins released by immune cells in the resolution of pain and several upstream signals that can regulate the expression of the proenkephalin gene PENK in Foxp3+ Tregs. The generation of transgenic mice with conditional deletion of PENK in Foxp3+ cells and PENK fate-mapping is novel and generates compelling data; they also show a comprehensive analysis of Tregs in control and transgenic mice, longitudinal data on heat sensitivity and co-localization of PENK+ Tregs with thermal sensory neurons in the skin further supporting their hypothesis. The study would be of interest to the biologists working in the field of neuroimmunology and inflammation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Longitudinal transcriptional changes reveal genes from the natural killer cell-mediated cytotoxicity pathway as critical players underlying COVID-19 progression

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Matias A Medina
   2. Francisco Fuentes-Villalobos
   3. Claudio Quevedo
   4. Felipe Aguilera
   5. Raul Riquelme
   6. Maria Luisa Rioseco
   7. Sebastian Barria
   8. Yazmin Pinos
   9. Mario Calvo
   10. Ian Burbulis
   11. Camila Kossack
   12. Raymond A Alvarez
   13. Jose Luis Garrido
   14. Maria Ines Barria

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable paper compares blood gene signature responses between small cohorts of individuals with mild and severe COVID-19. The authors provide solid evidence for distinct transcriptional profiles during early COVID-19 infections that may be predictive of severity, within the limitations of studying human patients displaying heterogeneity in infection timelines and limited cohort size.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Rifampicin tolerance and growth fitness among isoniazid-resistant clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from a longitudinal study

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Srinivasan Vijay
   2. Nguyen Le Hoai Bao
   3. Dao Nguyen Vinh
   4. Le Thanh Hoang Nhat
   5. Do Dang Anh Thu
   6. Nguyen Le Quang
   7. Le Pham Tien Trieu
   8. Hoang Ngoc Nhung
   9. Vu Thi Ngoc Ha
   10. Phan Vuong Khac Thai
   11. Dang Thi Minh Ha
   12. Nguyen Huu Lan
   13. Maxine Caws
   14. Guy E Thwaites
   15. Babak Javid
   16. Nguyen Thuy Thuong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study demonstrates that there is significant variation in the susceptibility of isoniazid-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates to killing by rifampicin, in some cases at the same tolerance levels as bona fide resistant strains. The evidence provided is solid, with no clear genetic marker for increased tolerance, suggesting that there may be multiple routes to achieving this phenotype. The work will be of interest to infectious disease researchers.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Structural insights into the GTP-driven monomerization and activation of a bacterial LRRK2 homolog using allosteric nanobodies

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Christian Galicia
   2. Giambattista Guaitoli
   3. Marcus Fislage
   4. Christian Johannes Gloeckner
   5. Wim Versées

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The fundamental study by Galicia C. et al. captured the GTP-bound active structure of CtRoco, a homolog of human LRRK2, using conformation-specific nanobodies. This convincing body of work reports the first structure of a GTP-bound ROCO protein, illustrating how GTP facilitates the dimer-to-monomer transition of CtRoco and functional activation.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Reliance on self-reports and estimated food composition data in nutrition research introduces significant bias that can only be addressed with biomarkers

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Javier I Ottaviani
   2. Virag Sagi-Kiss
   3. Hagen Schroeter
   4. Gunter GC Kuhnle

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study, using three bioactive compounds as a model, demonstrates that estimating the intake of food components based on food composition databases and self-reported dietary data is highly unreliable. The authors present convincing data showing the differences in the estimated quantile of intake of three bioactive compounds between biomarker and 24-hour dietary recall with food-composition database. The work will be of broad interest to the clinical nutrition research community.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Tumor purity-related genes for predicting the prognosis and drug sensitivity of DLBCL patients

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Zhenbang Ye
   2. Ning Huang
   3. Yongliang Fu
   4. Rongle Tian
   5. Liming Wang
   6. Wenting Huang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a predictive scoring system in DLBCL based on the expression of three tumour microenvironment-related genes. Such a scoring system seems useful for predicting tumour purity levels in DLBCL. The provided evidence showing an association between worse DLBLC prognosis and high-risk score is solid, but it is incomplete to draw a clear conclusion about the links between risk score and drug sensitivity.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Peptidoglycan-Chi3l1 interaction shapes gut microbiota in intestinal mucus layer

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Yan Chen
    2. Ruizhi Yang
    3. Bin Qi
    4. Zhao Shan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      Supported by convincing data, this valuable study demonstrates that the Chitinase 3-like protein 1 (Chi3l1) interacts with gut microbiota and protects animals from intestinal injury in laboratory colitis model. The revised manuscript sufficiently addressed the reviewers' comments. The work will be of interest to scientists studying crosstalk between gut microbiota and inflammatory diseases.

    Reviewed by eLife