eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Tuning apicobasal polarity and junctional recycling in the hemogenic endothelium orchestrates the morphodynamic complexity of emerging pre-hematopoietic stem cells

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Léa Torcq
   2. Sara Majello
   3. Catherine Vivier
   4. Anne A Schmidt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study presents a detailed characterization of two distinct cellular morphologies of haematopoietic stem cells undergoing endothelial to haematopoietic transition in zebrafish. It brings new information on how regulation of apico-basal polarity influences cellular behaviour, shape, and interaction with neighbouring cells. The evidence supporting the existence of these two distinct morphologies is convincing, using state-of-the-art confocal microscopy and image analysis of 2D-cartography.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Large-scale analysis of the integration of enhancer-enhancer signals by promoters

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Miguel Martinez-Ara
   2. Federico Comoglio
   3. Bas van Steensel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Understanding how genomic regulatory elements control spatiotemporal gene expression is essential for explaining cell type diversification, function, and the impact of genetic variation on disease. This important study provides solid evidence that enhancers generally combine additively to influence gene expression. Moreover, promoters, particularly weaker ones, can exhibit supra-additivity when integrating enhancer effects. These findings highlight the context-dependent nature of enhancer-promoter interactions in gene regulation, and contribute to ongoing discussions about the selectivity and combination of regulatory elements.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Interpreting roles of mutations associated with the emergence of S. aureus USA300 strains using transcriptional regulatory network reconstruction

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Saugat Poudel
   2. Jason Hyun
   3. Ying Hefner
   4. Jon Monk
   5. Victor Nizet
   6. Bernhard O Palsson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents valuable findings on core genome mutations that might have driven the emergence of the Staphylococcus aureus lineage USA300, a frequent cause of community-acquired infections. The authors present a solid novel approach that combines genome-wide association studies and RNA-expression analyses, both applied to extensive publicly available datasets. This approach generated an intriguing hypothesis that should be validated experimentally. The work will interest microbiologists working in genomic epidemiology and phenotype-genotype association studies.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. A dynamic neural resource model bridges sensory and working memory

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Ivan Tomić
   2. Paul M Bays

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents important insights into the dynamical process whereby sensory information is converted from stimulus-driven activity to a working memory representation from which the information can be recalled later. The evidence supporting the claims is convincing, using detailed fits and model-comparison techniques applied to new and existing psychophysical data sets to evaluate a wide variety of potential mechanisms. The overall conclusion, that iconic memory and working memory are not distinct mechanisms but rather two slightly different regimes of the same circuitry, will be of interest to neuroscientists and psychologists studying sensory systems and/or working memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The deubiquitinase Ubp3/Usp10 constrains glucose-mediated mitochondrial repression via phosphate budgeting

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Vineeth Vengayil
   2. Shreyas Niphadkar
   3. Swagata Adhikary
   4. Sriram Varahan
   5. Sunil Laxman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides valuable insights into the regulation of metabolic flux between glycolysis and respiration in yeast, particularly focusing on the role of inorganic phosphate. The authors propose a novel mechanism involving Ubp3/Ubp10 that potentially mitigates the Crabtree effect, offering substantial, solid evidence through a variety of well-designed assays. This study could reshape our understanding of metabolic regulation with broad biological contexts.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. DBT is a metabolic switch for maintenance of proteostasis under proteasomal impairment

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Ran-Der Hwang
   2. YuNing Lu
   3. Qing Tang
   4. Goran Periz
   5. Giho Park
   6. Xiangning Li
   7. Qiwang Xiang
   8. Yang Liu
   9. Tao Zhang
   10. Jiou Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study discovered DBT as a novel gene implicated in the resistance to MG132-mediated cytotoxicity and potentially also in the pathogenesis of ALS and FTD, two fatal neurodegenerative diseases. The authors provided convincing evidence to support a mechanism by which loss of DBT suppresses MG132-mediated toxicity via promoting autophagy. This work will be of interest to cell biologists and biochemists, especially in the FTD/ALS field.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Auditory cortical error signals retune during songbird courtship

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Caleb Jones
   2. Jesse H. Goldberg

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study reports that neural activity in the auditory cortex (field L) of singing male songbirds can be modulated by social context. These potentially important findings indicate that the presence of a female conspecific alters the response of auditory cortical neurons to the male bird's own song and to perturbations of auditory feedback that the bird has been trained to expect. While they extend recent work showing that the activity of dopaminergic neurons in songbirds is also affected by an audience, the evidence presented is incomplete since it is unclear how much of the apparent modulation of cortical neurons may be due to other factors, such as changes in the recorded neurons or their properties over time, which will require additional analyses to work out.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Deficiency of orexin receptor type 1 in dopaminergic neurons increases novelty-induced locomotion and exploration

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Xing Xiao
   2. Gagik Yeghiazaryan
   3. Fynn Eggersmann
   4. Anna Lena Cremer
   5. Heiko Backes
   6. Peter Kloppenburg
   7. Anne Christine Hausen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript describes valuable findings regarding the expression pattern of orexin receptors in the midbrain and how manipulating this system influences several behaviors, such as context-induced locomotor activity and exploration. The overall strength of evidence - which includes anatomical, viral manipulation studies, and brain imaging - is solid and broadly substantiates claims in the paper. However, there are several areas in which the conclusions are only partially supported by the combination of methods used. These results have implications for understanding the neural underpinnings of reward and will be of interest to neuroscientists and cognitive scientists with an interest in the neurobiology of reward.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Non-Hebbian plasticity transforms transient experiences into lasting memories

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Islam Faress
   2. Valentina Khalil
   3. Wen-Hsien Hou
   4. Andrea Moreno
   5. Niels Andersen
   6. Rosalina Fonseca
   7. Joaquin Piriz
   8. Marco Capogna
   9. Sadegh Nabavi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents important novel findings on how heterosynaptic plasticity can transform a weak associative memory into a stronger one, or produce a memory when stimuli were not paired. This work expands our views on the role of temporal- and input-specific plasticity in shaping learning and memory processes. The evidence, based on state-of-the-art in vivo manipulations, activity recordings, and behavioral analysis, is convincing. Findings will be of broad interest to neuroscience community, and especially those studying synaptic plasticity and associative memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Using synchronized brain rhythms to bias memory-guided decisions

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. John J Stout
    2. Allison E George
    3. Suhyeong Kim
    4. Henry L Hallock
    5. Amy L Griffin

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This study enhances our understanding of the relationship between cortico-hippocampal interactions and behavioral performance. Using an inter-areal coherence metric to gate trial initiation in real time, the authors provide solid evidence that links high hippocampal-prefrontal theta coherence to correct performance on spatial working memory and cue-guided decision-making tasks. Although reviewers agreed that the results do not demonstrate causality between hippocampal-prefrontal synchrony and behavioral performance, the findings are viewed as important given their potential implications for brain-machine interface applications in humans.

    Reviewed by eLife