eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. An emerging view of neural geometry in motor cortex supports high-performance decoding

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Sean M Perkins
   2. Elom A Amematsro
   3. John Cunningham
   4. Qi Wang
   5. Mark M Churchland

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper presents a new method called MINT that is effective at BCI-style decoding tasks. The authors show convincing evidence to support their claims regarding how MINT is a new method that produces excellent decoding performance relative to the state-of-the-art. This work is important and will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and neuroengineers.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A preclinical model of THC edibles that produces high-dose cannabimimetic responses

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Anthony English
   2. Fleur Uittenbogaard
   3. Alexa Torrens
   4. Dennis Sarroza
   5. Anna Veronica Elizabeth Slaven
   6. Daniele Piomelli
   7. Michael R Bruchas
   8. Nephi Stella
   9. Benjamin Bruce Land

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study presents the validation of an oral delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) consumption mouse model utilizing highly palatable e-capsule gelatin. The results convincingly demonstrate that oral consumption produced THC behavioral and physiological effects, as well as measurable brain levels. The utility of the model for chronic consumption remains to be determined. The authors have clearly acknowledged limitations of their model and areas for future study and development. As the field of cannabinoid research moves toward application of routes of administration that mimic human use, these model systems will be pivotal in assessing the effects of cannabinoid-based drugs.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Novel discoveries and enhanced genomic prediction from modelling genetic risk of cancer age-at-onset

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Ekaterina S. Maksimova
   2. Sven E. Ojavee
   3. Kristi Läll
   4. Marie C. Sadler
   5. Reedik Mägi
   6. Zoltan Kutalik
   7. Matthew R. Robinson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript is a useful contribution to the field of complex trait genomics. The study does have some real strengths, such as focusing on cancer age-of-onset, developing methods for this unusual trait and using two cohorts. However, the significance of findings is difficult to evaluate without further comparisons and validations, leaving the work in its current form incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Sex chromosome gene expression associated with vocal learning following hormonal manipulation in female zebra finches

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Matthew Davenport
   2. Ha Na Choe
   3. Hiroaki Matsunami
   4. Erich Jarvis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study is valuable as it provides information about the genes regulated by sex hormone treatment in song nuclei and other brain regions and suggests candidate genes that might induce sexual dimorphism in the zebra finch brain. The analysis presented is thorough and detailed. Whereas the evidence for gene regulation by hormone treatment is well supported, the evidence for an association of those genes with song learning (as written in the title) is incompletely supported as no manipulation of song learning or song analysis was conducted.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. PI3Kα inhibition blocks osteochondroprogenitor specification and the hyper-inflammatory response to prevent heterotopic ossification

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. José Antonio Valer
   2. Alexandre Deber
   3. Marius Wits
   4. Carolina Pimenta-Lope
   5. Marie-José Goumans
   6. Jose Luis Rosa
   7. Gonzalo Sánchez-Duffhues
   8. Francesc Ventura

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study, which includes additional experiments in response to the reviewer comments, presents valuable findings illustrating the role of PI3Kα in heterotopic ossification in FOP model mice. The methods, data, and analyses are solid and generally support the claims although as noted by one of the reviewers, there is no data demonstrating the effect of BYL79 on cell growth, and it remains unclear whether BYL79 also inhibits the Smad2/3 pathway. While this study provides new insights into the role of the PI3Kα pathway as a therapeutic target for FOP, questions about the mechanism of BYL79 still exist.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Stumpy forms are the predominant transmissible forms of Trypanosoma brucei

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jean Marc Tsagmo Ngoune
   2. Parul Sharma
   3. Aline Crouzols
   4. Nathalie Petiot
   5. Brice Rotureau

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     African (or Salivarian) trypanosomes are significant pathogens of humans and domestic animals. For many decades is was accepted that only the "stumpy" non-proliferative form was capable of infecting the Tsetse-fly vector, but recent work challenged this, suggesting that the proliferative "slender" form is also infective. The current paper provides important and convincing laboratory evidence that the original concept is probably correct for most infections: the slender form was not infective for adult Tsetse, and was only able to infect young, less immunocompetent flies if N-acetyl glucosamine was added to the feed.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Warming and altered precipitation independently and interactively suppress alpine soil microbial growth in a decadal-long experiment

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Yang Ruan
   2. Ning Ling
   3. Shengjing Jiang
   4. Xin Jing
   5. Jin-Sheng He
   6. Qirong Shen
   7. Zhibiao Nan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study addresses the long-term effect of warming and precipitation on microbial growth, as a proxy for understanding the impact of global warming. The evidence that warming and altered precipitation exhibit antagonistic effects on bacterial growth is compelling and advances our understanding of microbial dynamics affected by environmental factors. This study will interest microbial ecologists, microbiologists, and scientists generally concerned with climate change.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Post-EMT: Cadherin-11 mediates cancer hijacking fibroblasts

   This article has 25 authors:

   1. Weirong Kang
   2. Yibo Fan
   3. Yinxiao Du
   4. Elina A. Tonkova
   5. Yi-Hsin Hsu
   6. Kel Vin Tan
   7. Stephanie Alexander
   8. Bin Sheng Wong
   9. Haocheng Yang
   10. Jingyuan Luo
   11. Kuo Yao
   12. Jiayao Yang
   13. Xin Hu
   14. Tingting Liu
   15. Yu Gan
   16. Jian Zhang
   17. Jean J. Zhao
   18. Konstantinos Konstantopoulos
   19. Peter Friedl
   20. Pek Lan Khong
   21. Aiping Lu
   22. Mien-Chie Hung
   23. Michael B. Brenner
   24. Jeffrey E. Segall
   25. Zhizhan Gu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper presents a series of experiments investigating the role of cadherin-11 mediated interactions between cancer cells and fibroblasts in metastasis using updated 3D cell co-invasion assays. The primarily descriptive data are a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature of cross cell-type interactions in metastasis, but are incomplete with respect to the far-reaching conclusions about the central role cadherin-11, especially given the complex nature of the phenotype and the need to better contextualize these observations in a complete picture of metastasis.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Pleiotropic effects of trisomy and pharmacologic modulation on structural, functional, molecular, and genetic systems in a Down syndrome mouse model

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Sergi Llambrich
   2. Birger Tielemans
   3. Ellen Saliën
   4. Marta Atzori
   5. Kaat Wouters
   6. Vicky Van Bulck
   7. Mark Platt
   8. Laure Vanherp
   9. Nuria Gallego Fernandez
   10. Laura Grau de la Fuente
   11. Harish Poptani
   12. Lieve Verlinden
   13. Uwe Himmelreich
   14. Anca Croitor
   15. Catia Attanasio
   16. Zsuzsanna Callaerts-Vegh
   17. Willy Gsell
   18. Neus Martínez-Abadías
   19. Greetje Vande Velde

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents valuable findings that examine both how Down syndrome (DS)-related physiological, behavioral, and phenotypic traits track across time, as well as how chronic treatment with green tea extracts 25 enriched in epigallocatechin-3-gallate (GTE-EGCG), administered in drinking water spanning prenatal through 5 months of age, impacts these measures in wild-type and Ts65Dn mice. The strength of the evidence is solid, due to high variability across measures, perhaps in part attributable to a failure to include sex as a factor for measures known to be sexually dimorphic. This study is of interest to scientists interested in Down Syndrome and its treatment, as well as scientists who study disorders that impact multiple organ systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. The title and authors for this article are not available from our external data provider yet:
    10.48550/arxiv.2202.13658v1