eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Rapid bacterial evaluation beyond the colony forming unit in osteomyelitis

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Qi Sun
   2. Kimberley Huynh
   3. Dzenita Muratovic
   4. Nicholas J Gunn
   5. Anja R Zelmer
   6. Lucian Bogdan Solomon
   7. Gerald J Atkins
   8. Dongqing Yang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental study addresses discrepancies in determining bacterial burden in osteomyelitis as determined by culture and enumeration using DNA. The authors present compelling data demonstrating the emergence of discrepancies between CFU counts and genome copy numbers detected by PCR in Staphylococcus aureus strains infecting osteocyte-like cells. The observations represent a substantial addition to the field of musculoskeletal infection, with possible broad applicability and clinical benefit to other infectious diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Sperm fertility in mice with oligo-astheno-teratozoospermia restored by in vivo injection and electroporation of naked mRNA

   This article has 25 authors:

   1. Charline Vilpreux
   2. Guillaume Martinez
   3. Paul Fourquin
   4. Magali Court
   5. Florence Appaix
   6. Jean-Luc Duteyrat
   7. Maxime Henry
   8. Julien Vollaire
   9. Camille Ayad
   10. Altan Yavuz
   11. Lisa De Macedo
   12. Geneviève Chevalier
   13. Edgar Del Llano
   14. Emeline Lambert
   15. Sekou Ahmed Conte
   16. Zeina Wehbe
   17. Elsa Giordani
   18. Véronique Josserand
   19. Jacques Brocard
   20. Coutton Charles
   21. Bernard Verrier
   22. Pierre F Ray
   23. Corinne Loeuillet
   24. Christophe Arnoult
   25. Jessica Escoffier

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study reports an approach for restoring sperm motility in mice. The strength lies in in the novelty of the methodology being developed, but the evidence for the success of the method or its mechanism is inadequate. Additional experimental support would be required to support the conclusions of the authors.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Combinatorial CRISPR screen reveals FYN and KDM4 as targets for synergistic drug combination for treating triple negative breast cancer

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Tackhoon Kim
   2. Byung-Sun Park
   3. Soobeen Heo
   4. Heeju Jeon
   5. Jaeyeal Kim
   6. Donghwa Kim
   7. Sang Kook Lee
   8. So-Youn Jung
   9. Sun-Young Kong
   10. Timothy Lu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding that synthetically lethal kinase genes FYN and KDM4 may play a role in drug resistance to kinase inhibitors in TNBC. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although the exploration of the upstream mechanisms regulating KDM4A or the downstream pathways through which FYN upregulation confers drug resistance would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to medical biologists working in the field of breast cancer.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Glutamate neurotransmission from leptin receptor cells is required for typical puberty and reproductive function in female mice

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Cristina Sáenz de Miera
   2. Nicole Bellefontaine
   3. Susan J Allen
   4. Martin G Myers
   5. Carol F Elias

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study reports that glutamate signaling in LepRb PMv neurons is necessary for leptin-dependent fertility. The data supporting the conclusion is solid. This work will be of interest to researchers in the fields of both reproductive and metabolic biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. RNA polymerase III is involved in regulating Plasmodium falciparum virulence

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Gretchen Diffendall
   2. Aurelie Claes
   3. Anna Barcons-Simon
   4. Prince Nyarko
   5. Florent Dingli
   6. Miguel M Santos
   7. Damarys Loew
   8. Antoine Claessens
   9. Artur Scherf

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study links the activity of polymerase III to the regulation of virulence gene expression in the deadliest malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. It identifies Maf1 as a Pol III inhibitor that enables the parasite to respond to external stimuli such as magnesium chloride plasma levels by downregulating Pol III-transcribed ruf6 genes and subsequently regulated var genes. While the evidence presented is generally convincing, some of the results are incomplete, and the mechanistic link between external signals and Maf1 activation remains unknown.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Recent evolutionary origin and localized diversity hotspots of mammalian coronaviruses

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Renan Maestri
   2. Benoît Perez-Lamarque
   3. Anna Zhukova
   4. Hélène Morlon

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Maestri et al report the absence of phylogenetic evidence supporting codiversification of mammalian coronaviruses and their hosts, leading to the important conclusion that the evolutionary history of the virus and its hosts are decoupled through frequent host switches. The evidence for frequent host switching, derived from state-of-the-art probabilistic modeling of co-evolution, is convincing. The study adds a new perspective to the ongoing debate over the timescale of coronavirus evolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Population clustering of structural brain aging and its association with brain development

   This article has 29 authors:

   1. Haojing Duan
   2. Runye Shi
   3. Jujiao Kang
   4. Tobias Banaschewski
   5. Arun LW Bokde
   6. Christian Büchel
   7. Sylvane Desrivières
   8. Herta Flor
   9. Antoine Grigis
   10. Hugh Garavan
   11. Penny A Gowland
   12. Andreas Heinz
   13. Rüdiger Brühl
   14. Jean-Luc Martinot
   15. Marie-Laure Paillère Martinot
   16. Eric Artiges
   17. Frauke Nees
   18. Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos
   19. Luise Poustka
   20. Sarah Hohmann
   21. Nathalie Nathalie Holz
   22. Juliane Fröhner
   23. Michael N Smolka
   24. Nilakshi Vaidya
   25. Henrik Walter
   26. Robert Whelan
   27. Gunter Schumann
   28. Xiaolei Lin
   29. Jianfeng Feng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Duan et al analyzed brain imaging data in UKBK and divided structural brain aging into two groups, revealing that one group is more vulnerable to aging and brain-related diseases compared to the other group. Such subtyping could be valuable and utilized in predicting and diagnosing cognitive decline and neurodegenerative brain disorders in the future. This discovery, supported by solid evidence, harbors a substantial impacts in aging and brain structure and function.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. The asymmetric transfers of visual perceptual learning determined by the stability of geometrical invariants

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Yan Yang
   2. Yan Zhuo
   3. Zhentao Zuo
   4. Tiangang Zhuo
   5. Lin Chen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important and unique study proposes a framework to understand and predict generalization in visual perceptual learning in humans based on form invariants. Using behavioral experiments in humans and by training deep networks, the authors offer evidence that the presence of stable invariants in a task leads to faster learning. However, this interpretation is promising but counter-intuitive and incomplete, since there could be possible other confounds such as differing attentional demands that lead to differing patterns of generalization. It can be strengthened through additional experiments and by rejecting alternate explanations.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Volumetric trans-scale imaging of massive quantity of heterogeneous cell populations in centimeter-wide tissue and embryo

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Taro Ichimura
   2. Taishi Kakizuka
   3. Yoshitsugu Taniguchi
   4. Satoshi Ejima
   5. Yuki Sato
   6. Keiko Itano
   7. Kaoru Seiriki
   8. Hitoshi Hashimoto
   9. Ko Sugawara
   10. Hiroya Itoga
   11. Shuichi Onami
   12. Takeharu Nagai

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The important study established a large-scale objective and integrated multiple optical microscopy systems to demonstrate their potential for long-term imaging of the developmental process. The convincing imaging data cover a wide range of biological applications, such as organoids, mouse brains, and quail embryos, but enhancing image quality can further enhance the method's effectiveness. This work will appeal to biologists and imaging technologists focused on long-term imaging of large fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Taste triggers a homeostatic temperature control in hungry flies

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Yujiro Umezaki
    2. Sergio Hidalgo
    3. Erika Nguyen
    4. Tiffany Nguyen
    5. Jay Suh
    6. Sheena S Uchino
    7. Joanna Chiu
    8. Fumika Hamada

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This paper presents valuable findings that gustation and nutrition might independently influence the preferred environmental temperature in flies. The evidence supporting the main claims is solid and well presented. The finding that flies might thus exhibit a cephalic phase response similar to mammals will be of value for future investigations.

    Reviewed by eLife