eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Sex-specific resilience of neocortex to food restriction

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Zahid Padamsey
   2. Danai Katsanevaki
   3. Patricia Maeso
   4. Manuela Rizzi
   5. Emily E Osterweil
   6. Nathalie L Rochefort

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides important findings based on compelling evidence demonstrating that females and males have different strategies to regulate energy consumption in the brain in the context of low energy intake. While food deprivation reduces energy consumption and visual processing performance in the visual cortex of males, the female cortex is unaffected, likely at the expense of other functions. This study is relevant for scientists interested in body metabolism and neuroscience.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Spatial transcriptomics and single-nucleus RNA sequencing reveal a transcriptomic atlas of adult human spinal cord

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Donghang Zhang
   2. Yali Chen
   3. Yiyong Wei
   4. Hongjun Chen
   5. Yujie Wu
   6. Lin Wu
   7. Jin Li
   8. Qiyang Ren
   9. Changhong Miao
   10. Tao Zhu
   11. Jin Liu
   12. Bowen Ke
   13. Cheng Zhou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Zhang et al. deliver an important transcriptomic atlas of the human spinal cord, combining single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to unveil molecular insights. While convincingly overcoming Visium limitations using snRNA-seq, the manuscript is criticized for its largely observational approach and lack of quantitative analysis, especially in supporting claims about sex differences in motor neurons and DRG-spinal cord neuronal interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Shared structure facilitates working memory of multiple sequences

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Qiaoli Huang
   2. Huan Luo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study uses a novel experimental design to elegantly demonstrate how we exploit stimulus structure to overcome working memory capacity limits. The presented behavioural and neural evidence are solid and in line with the proposed information compression mechanism. This study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists studying structure learning and memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Meta-Research: Understudied genes are lost in a leaky pipeline between genome-wide assays and reporting of results

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Reese Richardson
   2. Heliodoro Tejedor Navarro
   3. Luis A Nunes Amaral
   4. Thomas Stoeger

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study investigated the factors related to understudied genes in biomedical research. It showed that understudied genes are largely abandoned at the writing stage, and it identified a number of biological and experimental factors that influence which genes are selected for investigation. The study is an important contribution to this branch of meta-research, and the evidence in support of the findings is solid.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The substrate-binding domains of the osmoregulatory ABC importer OpuA transiently interact

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Marco van den Noort
   2. Panagiotis Drougkas
   3. Cristina Paulino
   4. Bert Poolman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The OpuA Type I ABC importer uses two substrate binding domains to capture extracellular glycine betaine and present the substrate to the transmembrane domain for subsequent transport and correction of internal dehydration. This study presents valuable findings addressing the question of whether the two substrate binding domains of OpuA dock and physically interact in a salt-dependent manner. The single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer and cryogenic electron microscopy data that are presented provide convincing support for the existence of a transient interaction between the substrate binding domains that depends on ionic strength, laying a foundation for future studies exploring how this interaction is involved in the overall transport mechanism.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. High-risk Escherichia coli clones that cause neonatal meningitis and association with recrudescent infection

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Nguyen Thi Khanh Nhu
   2. Minh-Duy Phan
   3. Steven J Hancock
   4. Kate M Peters
   5. Laura Alvarez-Fraga
   6. Brian M Forde
   7. Stacey B Andersen
   8. Thyl Miliya
   9. Patrick NA Harris
   10. Scott A Beatson
   11. Sanmarie Schlebusch
   12. Haakon Bergh
   13. Paul Turner
   14. Annelie Brauner
   15. Benita Westerlund-Wikström
   16. Adam D Irwin
   17. Mark A Schembri

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study presents findings characterising the genomic features of E. coli isolated from neonatal meningitis from seven countries, and documents bacterial persistence and reinfection in two case studies. The genomic analyses are solid, although the inclusion of a larger number of isolates from more diverse geographies would have strengthened the generalisability of findings. The work will be of interest to people involved in the management of neonatal meningitis patients, and those studying E. coli epidemiology, diversity, and pathogenesis.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Cannabinoid combination targets NOTCH1-mutated T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia through the integrated stress response pathway

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elazar Besser
   2. Anat Gelfand
   3. Shiri Procaccia
   4. Paula Berman
   5. David Meiri

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study follows up on previous work defining the anti-leukemic effects of a previously characterized cannabis extract on Notch-activated T cells and identifies several pathways that mediate its anti-cancer activity including the ER calcium and integrated stress response. The evidence is solid, but several concerns remain including the over reliance on a single cell line for the majority of the studies and lack of integration of the observations with existing literature

   Reviewed by eLife

8. GTPase activating protein DLC1 spatio-temporally regulates Rho signaling

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Max Heydasch
   2. Lucien Hinderling
   3. Jakobus van Unen
   4. Maciej Dobrzynski
   5. Olivier Pertz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding on how the GAP DLC1, a deactivator of the small GTPase RhoA, regulates RhoA activity globally as well as at Focal Adhesions. Using a new acute optogenetic system coupled to a RhoA activity biosensor, the authors present solid evidence that DLC1 amplifies local Rho activity at Focal Adhesions. Nevertheless, the proposed mechanism could be further supported by a deeper analysis of the data.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Microglia facilitate and stabilize the response to general anesthesia via modulating the neuronal network in a brain region-specific manner

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Yang He
   2. Taohui Liu
   3. Quansheng He
   4. Wei Ke
   5. Xiaoyu Li
   6. Jinjin Du
   7. Suixin Deng
   8. Zhenfeng Shu
   9. Jialin Wu
   10. Baozhi Yang
   11. Yuqing Wang
   12. Ying Mao
   13. Yanxia Rao
   14. Yousheng Shu
   15. Bo Peng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding on the mechanisms underlying general anesthesia, with a focus on microglial regulation. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although some of the novelty of these findings may be reduced based on the recent publication of a similar study. The work will be of interest to medical biologists working on mechanisms of anesthesia, microglia, and neuron-microglia interaction.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Protein language model-embedded geometric graphs power inter-protein contact prediction

    This article has 2 authors:

    1. Yunda Si
    2. Chengfei Yan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This study presents a useful deep learning-based inter-protein contact prediction method named PLMGraph-Inter which combines protein language models and geometric graphs. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid. The authors show that their approach may be used in cases where AlphaFold-Multimer performs poorly. This work will be of interest to researchers working on protein complex structure prediction, particularly when accurate experimental structures are available for one or both of the monomers in isolation.

    Reviewed by eLife