eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Bacterial vampirism mediated through taxis to serum

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Siena J Glenn
   2. Zealon Gentry-Lear
   3. Michael Shavlik
   4. Michael J Harms
   5. Thomas J Asaki
   6. Arden Baylink

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work uses an interdisciplinary approach combining microfluidics, structural biology, and genetic analyses to provide important findings that show that pathogenic enteric bacteria exhibit taxis toward human serum. The data are compelling and show that the behavior utilizes the bacterial chemotaxis system and the chemoreceptor Tsr, which senses the amino acid L-serine. The work provides an ecological context for the role of serine as a bacterial chemoattractant and could have clinical implications for bacterial bloodstream invasion during episodes of gastrointestinal bleeding.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Enhancing TCR specificity predictions by combined pan- and peptide-specific training, loss-scaling, and sequence similarity integration

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Mathias Fynbo Jensen
   2. Morten Nielsen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a useful tool for predicting TCR specificity with compelling evidence for improvements over prior art. This work/tool will be broadly relevant to computational biologists and immunologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Reduced discrimination between signals of danger and safety but not overgeneralization is linked to exposure to childhood adversity in healthy adults

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens
   2. Katharina Hutterer
   3. Miriam A Schiele
   4. Elisabeth J Leehr
   5. Dirk Schümann
   6. Karoline Rosenkranz
   7. Joscha Böhnlein
   8. Jonathan Repple
   9. Jürgen Deckert
   10. Katharina Domschke
   11. Udo Dannlowski
   12. Ulrike Lueken
   13. Andreas Reif
   14. Marcel Romanos
   15. Peter Zwanzger
   16. Paul Pauli
   17. Matthias Gamer
   18. Tina B Lonsdorf

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study addresses two questions: (i) how danger signaling is altered for people with childhood adversities, and (ii) how this differs across different operationalizations of adversity. The latter is of particularly broad interest to multiple fields, given that childhood adversity is operationalized very differently across the literature. The study provides compelling evidence using a large sample size and rigorous statistical methods. These data will be of interest to scientists and clinicians interested in early life adversity, statistical approaches for quantifying stress exposure, or aversive learning.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. BMP signaling maintains auricular chondrocyte identity and prevents microtia development by inhibiting protein kinase A

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Ruichen Yang
   2. Hongshang Chu
   3. Hua Yue
   4. Yuji Mishina
   5. Zhenlin Zhang
   6. Huijuan Liu
   7. Baojie Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     BMP signaling plays a vital role in skeletal tissues, and the importance of its role in microtia prevention is novel and promising. This important study sheds light on the role of BMP signaling in preventing microtia in the ear, with solid data broadly supporting the claims of the authors.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The evolution of olfactory sensitivity, preferences, and behavioral responses in Mexican cavefish is influenced by fish personality

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Maryline Blin
   2. Louis Valay
   3. Manon Kuratko
   4. Marie Pavie
   5. Sylvie Rétaux

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this important paper, Blin and colleagues develop a high-throughput behavioral assay to test spontaneous swimming and olfactory preference in individual Mexican cavefish larvae. The authors present compelling evidence that the surface and cave morphs of the fish show different olfactory preferences and odor sensitivities and that individual fish show substantial variability in their spontaneous activity that is relevant for olfactory behaviour. The paper will be of interest to neurobiologists working on the evolution of behaviour, olfaction, and the individuality of behaviour.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Amphibian mast cells serve as barriers to chytrid fungus infections

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Kelsey A Hauser
   2. Christina N Garvey
   3. Ryley S Crow
   4. Muhammad RH Hossainey
   5. Dustin T Howard
   6. Netra Ranganathan
   7. Lindsey K Gentry
   8. Amulya Yaparla
   9. Namarta Kalia
   10. Mira Zelle
   11. Elizabeth J Jones
   12. Anju N Duttargi
   13. Louise A Rollins-Smith
   14. Carly R Muletz-Wolz
   15. Leon Grayfer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study reveals the role of skin-resident mast cells in amphibians in mediating antimicrobial responses. The data are compelling and highlight species-specific biology that can cross-inform human mast cell biology in a species that does not rely on IgE as a primary mechanism for antimicrobial skin responses.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Pigmentation level of human iPSC-derived RPE does not indicate a specific gene expression profile

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Yoko Nakai-Futatsugi
   2. Jianshi Jin
   3. Taisaku Ogawa
   4. Noriko Sakai
   5. Akiko Maeda
   6. Ken-ichi Hironaka
   7. Masakazu Fukuda
   8. Hiroki Danno
   9. Yuji Tanaka
   10. Seiji Hori
   11. Katsuyuki Shiroguchi
   12. Masayo Takahashi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This useful work describes a novel microscopy-based method to correlate the degree of pigmentation with the gene expression profile of human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived Retinal Pigmented Epithelial (iPSC-RPE) cells at the single cell level. The presented evidence is solid in showing that there is heterogeneous gene expression in iPSC-derived RPE cells, and there is no significant correlation with the pigmentation. By analyzing the expression of some genes related to function, lysosomal- and complement-related pathways were partially enriched in darker cells. This methodology can be used by other researchers interested in analyzing gene expression related to microscopic images.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Development of equation of motion deciphering locomotion including omega turns of Caenorhabditis elegans

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Taegon Chung
   2. Iksoo Chang
   3. Sangyeol Kim

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This useful study introduces a simple mechanical model of C. elegans locomotion that captures aspects of the worm's behavioral repertoire beyond forward crawling. While the kinetic model (ElegansBot) provides a compromise and starting point to help understand the mechanical components of C. elegans behavior, the claim that this work improves on extant mechanical models is incomplete, including modeling a 3-dimensional turning behavior with a 2-dimensional model without sufficient justification. In addition, the results of the application of the model to previously unstudied behaviors are primarily qualitative and do not produce new predictions.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Base editing strategies to convert CAG to CAA diminish the disease-causing mutation in Huntington’s disease

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Doo Eun Choi
   2. Jun Wan Shin
   3. Sophia Zeng
   4. Eun Pyo Hong
   5. Jae-Hyun Jang
   6. Jacob M Loupe
   7. Vanessa C Wheeler
   8. Hannah E Stutzman
   9. Ben Kleinstiver
   10. Jong-Min Lee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This proof-of-concept study focuses on an A->G DNA base editing strategy that converts CAG repeats to CAA repeats in the human HTT gene, which causes Huntington's disease (HD). These studies are conducted in human HEK293 cells engineered with a 51 CAG canonical repeat and in HD knock-in mice harboring 105+ CAG repeats. The findings of this study are valuable for the HD field, applying state-of-the-art techniques. However, the key experiments have yet to be performed in neuronal systems or brains of these mice: actual disease-rectifying effects relevant to patients have yet to observed, leaving the work incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Signatures of transposon-mediated genome inflation, host specialization, and photoentrainment in Entomophthora muscae and allied entomophthoralean fungi

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Jason E Stajich
    2. Brian Lovett
    3. Emily Lee
    4. Angie M Macias
    5. Ann E Hajek
    6. Benjamin L de Bivort
    7. Matt T Kasson
    8. Henrik H De Fine Licht
    9. Carolyn Elya

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This important study reports on the genome evolution of a poorly studied fungal group. By combining long-read sequencing and different bioinformatic analyses, the authors show that the giant genome of Entomophthora muscae expanded due to extensive transposable element activity. The strength of evidence is compelling and the authors are to be commended for their multiple comparative analyses of gene content along with transparently written and visualized techniques, data curation, and methods. This paper will be of relevance to fungal biologists as well as to evolutionary biologists interested in the study of genome size dynamics.

    Reviewed by eLife