eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Large pan-cancer cell screen coupled to (phospho-)proteomics underscores high-dose vitamin C as a potent anti-cancer agent

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Andrea Vallés-Martí
   2. Franziska Böttger
   3. Elysia Yau
   4. Khadija Tejjani
   5. Loes Meijs
   6. Sugandhi Sharma
   7. Madiha Mumtaz
   8. Tessa Y. S. Le Large
   9. Ayse Erozenci
   10. Daniëlle Dekker
   11. Tim Schelfhorst
   12. Jan Paul Medema
   13. Irene V Bijnsdorp
   14. Jaco C Knol
   15. Sander R Piersma
   16. Thang V. Pham
   17. Elisa Giovannetti
   18. Connie R Jiménez

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This useful study utilizes proteomics analysis across a large panel of 51 cancer cell lines to elucidate mechanisms underlying the sensitivity of cancer cells to high-dose vitamin C (Ascorbate). While the associations between specific molecular pathways and sensitivity to ascorbate are interesting, a major limitation is that the study is largely descriptive and incomplete, lacking evidence on the molecular underpinnings of cancer cells' sensitivity to high-dose vitamin C.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Clinical phenotypes in acute and chronic infarction explained through human ventricular electromechanical modelling and simulations

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Xin Zhou
   2. Zhinuo Jenny Wang
   3. Julia Camps
   4. Jakub Tomek
   5. Alfonso Santiago
   6. Adria Quintanas
   7. Mariano Vazquez
   8. Marmar Vaseghi
   9. Blanca Rodriguez

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This computational study integrates detailed electrophysiology and mechanical contraction predictions, which are often modeled separately. The findings of this important work are that abnormal ECGs that are associated with higher risk of sudden cardiac death are predicted to have almost no relationship with left ventricular ejection fraction, which is conventionally used as a risk factor for arrhythmia. The conclusions are based on compelling evidence for the need of incorporating additional risk factors for assessing post-myocardial infarction patients.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Proteomic and functional comparison between human induced and embryonic stem cells

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Alejandro J Brenes
   2. Eva Griesser
   3. Linda V Sinclair
   4. Lindsay Davidson
   5. Alan R Prescott
   6. Francois Singh
   7. Elizabeth KJ Hogg
   8. Carmen Espejo-Serrano
   9. Hao Jiang
   10. Harunori Yoshikawa
   11. Melpomeni Platani
   12. Jason R Swedlow
   13. Greg M Findlay
   14. Doreen A Cantrell
   15. Angus I Lamond

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study reports differences in proteomic profiles of embryonic versus induced pluripotent stem cells. This important finding cautions against the interchangeable use of both types of cells in biomedical research, although the mechanisms responsible for these differences remains unknown. The proteomic evidence is convincing, even though there is limited validation with other methods.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Lipid discovery enabled by sequence statistics and machine learning

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Priya M Christensen
   2. Jonathan Martin
   3. Aparna Uppuluri
   4. Luke R Joyce
   5. Yahan Wei
   6. Ziqiang Guan
   7. Faruck Morcos
   8. Kelli L Palmer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study reports important findings on identifying sequence motifs that predict substrate specificity in a class of lipid synthesis enzymes. It sheds light on a mechanism used by bacteria to modify the lipids in their membrane to develop antibiotic resistance. The evidence is compelling, with a careful application of machine learning methods, validated by mass spectrometry-based lipid analysis experiments. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to computational biologists and to the community working on lipids and on enzymes involved in lipid synthesis or modification.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Post-fertilization transcription initiation in an ancestral LTR retrotransposon drives lineage-specific genomic imprinting of ZDBF2

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Hisato Kobayashi
   2. Tatsushi Igaki
   3. Soichiro Kumamoto
   4. Keisuke Tanaka
   5. Tomoya Takashima
   6. So I Nagaoka
   7. Shunsuke Suzuki
   8. Masaaki Hayashi
   9. Marilyn B Renfree
   10. Manabu Kawahara
   11. Shun Saito
   12. Toshihiro Kobayashi
   13. Hiroshi Nagashima
   14. Hitomi Matsunari
   15. Kazuaki Nakano
   16. Ayuko Uchikura
   17. Hiroshi Kiyonari
   18. Mari Kaneko
   19. Hiroo Imai
   20. Kazuhiko Nakabayashi
   21. Matthew Lorincz
   22. Kazuki Kurimoto

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors analyses describe a novel mechanism by which a retrotransposon-derived LTR may be involved in genomic imprinting and demonstrate imprinting of the ZDBF2 locus in rabbits and Rhesus macaques using allele-specific expression analysis. This imprinting of the ZDBF2 locus correlates with transcription of GPR1-AS orthologs. The accompanying genomic analysis is very well executed allowing for the conclusions reached in the manuscript. The revisions made at the request of the reviewers in this important manuscript strengthen the evidence from the genomic analyses, and as a result, the evidence is now convincing and will be informative to the genomics and developmental biology communities.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The neural correlates of novelty and variability in human decision-making under an active inference framework

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Shuo Zhang
   2. Yan Tian
   3. Quanying Liu
   4. Haiyan Wu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study addresses a central question in systems neuroscience (validation of active inference models of exploration) using a combination of behaviour, neuroimaging, and modelling. The data provided offers solid evidence that humans do perceive, choose and learn in a manner consistent with the essential ingredients of active inference, and that quantities that correlate with relevant parameters of this active inference scheme are encoded in different regions of the brain.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Impact of protein and small molecule interactions on kinase conformations

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Valentina Kugler
   2. Selina Schwaighofer
   3. Andreas Feichtner
   4. Florian Enzler
   5. Jakob Fleischmann
   6. Sophie Strich
   7. Sarah Schwarz
   8. Rebecca Wilson
   9. Philipp Tschaikner
   10. Jakob Troppmair
   11. Veronika Sexl
   12. Pascal Meier
   13. Teresa Kaserer
   14. Eduard Stefan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This article reports an important bioluminescence-based reporter system to evaluate kinase conformations. This assay is applied to four different kinases that have unique, very special regulatory features, thereby indicating that the assay can be used to provide convincing evidence on the conformational state of a large number of kinases. This paper will be of interest to researchers working on kinases and their conformational states.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Paradoxical dominant negative activity of an immunodeficiency-associated activating PIK3R1 variant

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Patsy R Tomlinson
   2. Rachel G Knox
   3. Olga Perisic
   4. Helen Su
   5. Gemma V Brierley
   6. Roger L Williams
   7. Robert K Semple

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reports on PI3KR mutations and a paradoxical mechanism of PI3KR signaling. The strength of evidence for the study is mostly convincing, as conclusions are supported by a variety of mutational strategies and cellular systems to look at interactions among signaling pathways.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Disassembly of embryonic keratin filaments promotes pancreatic cancer metastases

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Ryan R. Kawalerski
   2. Mariana Torrente Gonçalves
   3. Chun-Hao Pan
   4. Robert Tseng
   5. Lucia Roa-Peña
   6. Cindy V. Leiton
   7. Luke A. Torre-Healy
   8. Taryn Boyle
   9. Sumedha Chowdhury
   10. Natasha T. Snider
   11. Kenneth R. Shroyer
   12. Luisa F. Escobar-Hoyos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors address the function of keratin 17 (K17), a marker of the most aggressive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDACs). While this potentially useful study addresses a significant area of pancreatic cancer research, the lack of evidence demonstrating nuclear localization of K17 in human PDAC and the excessive reliance on a single cell line reduce the significance of the work. Moreover, the weak phenotypes of K17 phosphosite mutants provide incomplete support for the authors' mechanistic model.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Theoretical principles explain the structure of the insect head direction circuit

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Pau Vilimelis Aceituno
    2. Dominic Dall'Osto
    3. Ioannis Pisokas

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This important work suggests that the observed cosine-like activity in the head direction circuit of insects not only subserves vector addition but also minimizes noise in the representation. The authors provide solid evidence using the locust and fruit fly connectomes. The work raises important theoretical questions about the organization of the navigation system and will be of interest to theoretical and experimental researchers studying navigation.

    Reviewed by eLife