eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Commensal bacteria maintain a Qa-1b-restricted unconventional CD8+ T population in gut epithelium

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Jian Guan
   2. J David Peske
   3. Michael Manoharan Valerio
   4. Chansu Park
   5. Ellen A Robey
   6. Scheherazade Sadegh-Nasseri

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important study that investigates the role of commensal microbes and molecules in the antigen presentation pathway affecting the development and phenotype of an unusual population of T lymphocytes. The authors provide compelling evidence to identify a population of unconventional T cells that exist in the small intestinal epithelium, which appear to depend on commensal microbes, and show that a single commensal microbe (that encodes an antigen capable of weakly stimulating these cells) is sufficient to maintain this T cell population.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Deficiency of IQCH causes male infertility in humans and mice

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Tiechao Ruan
   2. Ruixi Zhou
   3. Yihong Yang
   4. Junchen Guo
   5. Chuan Jiang
   6. Xiang Wang
   7. Gan Shen
   8. Siyu Dai
   9. Suren Chen
   10. Ying Shen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study describes mice with a knock out of the IQ motif-containing H (IQCH) gene, to model a human loss-of-function mutation in IQCH associated with male sterility. While the evidence for interaction between IQCH and potential RNA binding proteins is limited, the human infertility is reproduced in the mouse, making it a compelling model. The paper could be of interest to cell biologists and male reproductive biologists working on the sperm flagellar cytoskeleton and mitochondrial structure.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Physiological and metabolic insights into the first cultured anaerobic representative of deep-sea Planctomycetes bacteria

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Rikuan Zheng
   2. Chong Wang
   3. Rui Liu
   4. Ruining Cai
   5. Chaomin Sun

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study advances the understanding of physiological mechanisms in deep-sea Planctomycetes bacteria, revealing unique characteristics such as the only known Phycisphaerae using a budding mode of division, extensive involvement in nitrate assimilation, and release phage particles without cell death. The study uses convincing evidence based on experiments using growth assays, phylogenetics, transcriptomics, and gene expression data. The work will be of interest to bacteriologists and microbiologists in general.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Fingertip viscoelasticity enables human tactile neurons to encode loading history alongside current force

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hannes P Saal
   2. Ingvars Birznieks
   3. Roland S Johansson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The fundamental findings reported here provide insight into how the viscoelasticity of the fingertip skin influences the activity of mechanoreceptive afferents and thus the neural coding of force in humans. The basic principle studied was whether and to what extent the previous applied force directions impact the firing of FA-1, SA-1 and SA-2 neurons during the current applied force directions. The data and analyses are compelling and will be helpful for modeling the neural representations of force in the context of object grasping and manipulation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Ab initio prediction of specific phospholipid complexes and membrane association of HIV-1 MPER antibodies by multi-scale simulations

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Colleen A Maillie
   2. Kiana Golden
   3. Ian A Wilson
   4. Andrew B Ward
   5. Marco Mravic

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports multi-scale molecular dynamics simulations to investigate a class of highly potent antibodies that simultaneously engage with the HIV-1 Envelope trimer and the viral membrane. The work provides insights into how broadly neutralizing antibodies associate with lipids proximal to membrane-associated epitopes to drive neutralization. After extensive revision, the level of evidence is considered solid, although a quantitative assessment of the underlying energetics remain difficult to obtain.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A stable microtubule bundle formed through an orchestrated multistep process controls quiescence exit

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Damien Laporte
   2. Aurelie Massoni-Laporte
   3. Charles Lefranc
   4. Jim Dompierre
   5. David Mauboules
   6. Emmanuel T Nsamba
   7. Anne Royou
   8. Lihi Gal
   9. Maya Schuldiner
   10. Mohan L Gupta
   11. Isabelle Sagot

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work presents important insights regarding the mechanism underlying the assembly, maintenance, and disassembly of a very stable microtubule-based structure, termed quiescent-cell nuclear microtubule (Q-nMT) bundle, which is formed in quiescent yeast cells to ensure cell survival and viability. This insight will help to elucidate how very stable microtubules can exist alongside very dynamic microtubules, which is still poorly understood. While the experimental support is overall solid, additional analyses using state-of-the-art methodology would further strengthen some of the claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. High-resolution kinetics of herbivore-induced plant volatile transfer reveal clocked response patterns in neighboring plants

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jamie Mitchel Waterman
   2. Tristan Michael Cofer
   3. Lei Wang
   4. Gaetan Glauser
   5. Matthias Erb

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental study examines the effects of herbivory-induced maize volatiles on neighbouring plants and their responses over time. Measurements of volatile compound classes and gene expression in receiver plants exposed to these volatiles led to the conclusion that the delayed emission of certain terpenes in receiver plants after the onset of light may be a result of stress memory, highlighting the role of priming and induction in plant defences triggered by herbivore-induced plant volatiles. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with rigorous chemical assays of and state-of-the-art high throughput real time mass spectrometry. The work will be of broad interest to plant biologists and chemical ecologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Calcineurin inhibition enhances Caenorhabditis elegans lifespan by defecation defects-mediated calorie restriction and nuclear hormone signaling

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Priyanka Das
   2. Alejandro Aballay
   3. Jogender Singh

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reveals insights into how calcineurin influences C. elegans pathogen susceptibility and lifespan through its role in controlling the defecation motor program. The authors provide convincing evidence to support a new mechanism through which calcineurin impacts longevity. This work will be of interest to investigators studying host-pathogen interactions and aging in a number of experimental systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Adult-born granule cells modulate CA2 network activity during retrieval of developmental memories of the mother

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Blake J Laham
   2. Isha R Gore
   3. Casey J Brown
   4. Elizabeth Gould

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper reports a valuable set of new results. The main result is that the projection from adult-born granule cells in the dentate gyrus to the hippocampal subfield CA2 is necessary for the retrieval of a social memory formed during development, and solid evidence is provided to support this conclusion.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Positive selection and relaxed purifying selection contribute to rapid evolution of male-biased genes in a dioecious flowering plant

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Lei Zhao
    2. Wei Zhou
    3. Jun He
    4. De-Zhu Li
    5. Hong-Tao Li

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This valuable paper examines gene expression differences between male and female individuals over the course of flower development in the dioecious angiosperm Trichosantes pilosa. Male-biased genes evolve faster than female-biased and unbiased genes, which is frequently observed in animals, but this is the first report of such a pattern in plants. In spite of the limited sample size, the evidence is mostly solid and the methods appropriate for a non-model organism. The resources produced will be used by researchers working in the Cucurbitaceae, and the results obtained advance our understanding of the mechanisms of plant sexual reproduction and its evolutionary implications: as such they will broadly appeal to evolutionary biologists and plant biologists.

    Reviewed by eLife