eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Stratification of enterochromaffin cells by single-cell expression analysis

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Yan Song
   2. Linda J Fothergill
   3. Kari S Lee
   4. Brandon Y Liu
   5. Ada Koo
   6. Mark Perelis
   7. Shanti Diwakarla
   8. Brid Callaghan
   9. Jie Huang
   10. Jill Wykosky
   11. John B Furness
   12. Gene W Yeo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a transcriptomic analysis of enterochromaffin cells in the intestine. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is solid, although the functional analysis is focused on the Piezo2-expressing subset in the colon. The work will be of interest to biologists working on intestinal mucosal biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Taste shaped the use of botanical drugs

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Marco Leonti
   2. Joanna Baker
   3. Peter Staub
   4. Laura Casu
   5. Julie Hawkins

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study links the "taste" of botanicals to their application as medicines used by the ancient Greco-Roman society. The authors used phylogenetic linear mixed models in a Bayesian framework to test the relationships between taste qualities, intensities, complexities, and therapeutic use. The evidence supporting the conclusions is solid, although there is a minor weakness concerning the somewhat inconsistent method of botanical preparation and presentation to the taster panelists; subjective bias and robustness of the participants' responses might have been overlooked. The study may be of broad interest to pharmacologists and scientists working on drug discovery, particularly those interested in natural products.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Major patterns in the introgression history of Heliconius butterflies

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yuttapong Thawornwattana
   2. Fernando Seixas
   3. Ziheng Yang
   4. James Mallet

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study revises the evolutionary history of Heliconius butterflies, a well-established model system for understanding speciation in the presence of gene flow between species. Using a convincing statistical phylogenetic approach that relies on the multispecies coalescent, the authors reconstruct the evolution of the lineage, including the timing of speciation events and the history of gene flow. The new phylogeny will be of interest to all researchers working on Heliconius butterflies, and the phylogenetic approach to investigators aiming to understand the history of lineages that have experienced extensive gene flow.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. A TOPBP1 allele causing male infertility uncouples XY silencing dynamics from sex body formation

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Carolline Ascenção
   2. Jennie R Sims
   3. Alexis Dziubek
   4. William Comstock
   5. Elizabeth A Fogarty
   6. Jumana Badar
   7. Raimundo Freire
   8. Andrew Grimson
   9. Robert S Weiss
   10. Paula E Cohen
   11. Marcus B Smolka

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study reports a new mutant mouse line with compromised function of a DNA damage response protein. The evidence supporting the conclusion that the mutants display defective maintenance of meiotic sex chromosome inactivation is solid. This work is of interest to biomedical researchers working on meiosis and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Fluorescein-based sensors to purify human α-cells for functional and transcriptomic analyses

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Sevim Kahraman
   2. Kimitaka Shibue
   3. Dario F De Jesus
   4. Hyunki Kim
   5. Jiang Hu
   6. Debasish Manna
   7. Bridget Wagner
   8. Amit Choudhary
   9. Rohit N Kulkarni

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The manuscript by Kahraman et al. describes the use of a fluorescent dye for purifying and analyzing human islet alpha cells. The study provides solid evidence that the alpha cells can be purified using this method and the cells remained viable and functional after culturing for several days. The significance of the study is access to a new tool that will be useful for islet biologists and researchers studying diabetes mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Fungal–bacteria interactions provide shelter for bacteria in Caesarean section scar diverticulum

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Peigen Chen
   2. Haicheng Chen
   3. Ziyu Liu
   4. Xinyi Pan
   5. Qianru Liu
   6. Xing Yang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study reports the fungal composition and its interaction with bacteria in the Caesarean section scar diverticulum. The data are solid and supportive of the conclusion. This work will be of interest to researchers and clinicians who work on women's health.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Synthetic analysis of trophic diversity and evolution in Enantiornithes with new insights from Bohaiornithidae

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Case Vincent Miller
   2. Jen A Bright
   3. Xiaoli Wang
   4. Xiaoting Zheng
   5. Michael Pittman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study explores numerous lines of evidence for the surprisingly diverse diets of a group of toothed birds that lived over 100 million years ago. The large amount of data the authors collected forms a solid dataset. The methods might in principle be extensible to other limbed vertebrates, although there are concerns regarding some of the details. The article will be of interest to colleagues studying ecological evolution in birds or dinosaurs more generally, as well as to anyone studying the impact of the mass extinction event 66 million years ago.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Effects of blood meal source and seasonality on reproductive traits of Culex quinquefasciatus (Diptera: Culicidae)

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Kevin Alen Rucci
   2. Gabriel Barco
   3. Andrea Onorato
   4. Mauricio Beranek
   5. Mariana Pueta
   6. Adrián Díaz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study provides the first assessment of potentially interactive effects of seasonality and blood source on mosquito fitness, together in one study. During revision, the manuscript has been substantively improved, providing additional solid data to support the robustness of observations. Overall, this interesting study will advance our current understanding of mosquito biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Microbes with higher metabolic independence are enriched in human gut microbiomes under stress

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Iva Veseli
   2. Yiqun T Chen
   3. Matthew S Schechter
   4. Chiara Vanni
   5. Emily C Fogarty
   6. Andrea R Watson
   7. Bana Jabri
   8. Ran Blekhman
   9. Amy D Willis
   10. Michael K Yu
   11. Antonio Fernàndez-Guerra
   12. Jessika Füssel
   13. A Murat Eren

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important new bioinformatics tool for normalizing gene copy number from metagenomic assemblies and applies it to gain functional insights into the loss of microbial diversity during conditions of stress. The inclusion of extensive computational validation makes this a compelling study that raises intriguing new hypotheses regarding the impact of disease states on the gut microbiome. This paper will likely be of broad interest to researchers studying the role of complex microbial communities in host health and disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Complex aneuploidy triggers autophagy and p53-mediated apoptosis and impairs the second lineage segregation in human preimplantation embryos

    This article has 11 authors:

    1. Marius Regin
    2. Yingnan Lei
    3. Edouard Couvreu De Deckersberg
    4. Charlotte Janssens
    5. Anfien Huyghebaert
    6. Yves Guns
    7. Pieter Verdyck
    8. Greta Verheyen
    9. Hilde Van de Velde
    10. Karen Sermon
    11. Claudia Spits

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study provides valuable insights into the cellular responses to complex aneuploidy in human preimplantation embryos. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is now convincing after addressing previous concerns. This work will be of interest to embryologists, geneticists and scholars working on reproductive medicine by increasing our understanding of how human embryos respond to chromosomal abnormalities.

    Reviewed by eLife