eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Ice nucleation proteins self-assemble into large fibres to trigger freezing at near 0 °C

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Thomas Hansen
   2. Jocelyn Lee
   3. Naama Reicher
   4. Gil Ovadia
   5. Shuaiqi Guo
   6. Wangbiao Guo
   7. Jun Liu
   8. Ido Braslavsky
   9. Yinon Rudich
   10. Peter L Davies

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study provides molecular-level insights into the functional mechanism of bacterial ice-nucleating proteins, detailing electrostatic interactions in the domain architecture of multimeric assemblies. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, with results from protein engineering experiments, functional assays, and cryo-electron tomography, while the proposed structural model of protein self-assembly remains hypothetical. The work is of broad interest to researchers in the fields of protein structural biology, biochemistry, and biophysics, with implications in microbial ecology and atmospheric glaciation.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Identification of fallopian tube microbiota and its association with ovarian cancer

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Bo Yu
   2. Congzhou Liu
   3. Sean C Proll
   4. Enna Manhardt
   5. Shuying Liang
   6. Sujatha Srinivasan
   7. Elizabeth Swisher
   8. David N Fredricks

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Little is known about the role of the microbiome alterations in epithelial ovarian cancer. This important and rigorous study carefully examined the microbiome composition of 1001 samples from close to 200 ovarian cancer cases and controls, and presents compelling evidence that the fallopian tube microbiota are perturbed in ovarian cancer patients. These insights are expected to fuel further exploration into translational opportunities stemming from these findings.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Tailoring Tfh profiles enhances antibody persistence to a clade C HIV-1 vaccine in rhesus macaques

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Anil Verma
   2. Chase E Hawes
   3. Sonny R Elizaldi
   4. Justin C Smith
   5. Dhivyaa Rajasundaram
   6. Gabriel Kristian Pedersen
   7. Xiaoying Shen
   8. LaTonya D Williams
   9. Georgia D Tomaras
   10. Pamela A Kozlowski
   11. Rama R Amara
   12. Smita S Iyer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors' findings have theoretical or practical deep implications, which makes them important. The methods, data, and analyzes support the authors' arguments with only minor weaknesses, and overall they are solid. In vitro culture experiments could provide evidence to strengthen the evidence for the functional significance of Th1-mediated cytokines in the observed B cell responses.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. SOD1 is a synthetic-lethal target in PPM1D-mutant leukemia cells

   This article has 24 authors:

   1. Linda Zhang
   2. Joanne I Hsu
   3. Etienne D Braekeleer
   4. Chun-Wei Chen
   5. Tajhal D Patel
   6. Alejandra G Martell
   7. Anna G Guzman
   8. Katharina Wohlan
   9. Sarah M Waldvogel
   10. Hidetaka Uryu
   11. Ayala Tovy
   12. Elsa Callen
   13. Rebecca L Murdaugh
   14. Rosemary Richard
   15. Sandra Jansen
   16. Lisenka Vissers
   17. Bert BA de Vries
   18. Andre Nussenzweig
   19. Shixia Huang
   20. Cristian Coarfa
   21. Jamie Anastas
   22. Koichi Takahashi
   23. George Vassiliou
   24. Margaret A Goodell

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Gain-of-function mutations and amplifications of PPM1D are found across several human cancers and are associated with advanced tumor stage and worse prognosis. Thus far, the clinical translation has not been possible due to the lack of PPM1D inhibitors with favorable pharmacokinetic properties. This useful study leverages CRISPR/Cas9 screening to determine that loss of SOD1 and is synthetic lethal with PPM1D mutation in leukemia. The mechanistic analyses are still incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Balance of activity during a critical period tunes a developing network

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Iain Hunter
   2. Bramwell Coulson
   3. Tom Pettini
   4. Jacob J Davies
   5. Jill Parkin
   6. Matthias Landgraf
   7. Richard A Baines

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study combines electrophysiology and neuroanatomy with pharmacological and optogenetic manipulation in the Drosophila genetic model system to pinpoint the neural substrate that is influenced by altered activity during a critical period (CP) of larval locomotor circuit development. Increasing activity during the CP causes permanent network changes, manifesting in increased recovery times from seizures and altered intersegmental coordination during locomotion, thus indicating that a setpoint of network excitability is determined during the CP. Next, compelling experiments demonstrate that this goes along with increased excitation/inhibition ratios to single identified motoneurons and most importantly, for excitability setpoint determination during the CP excitatory and inhibitory inputs are integrated such that the effect of CP hyperexcitation is rescued by the stimulation of endogenous inhibitory inputs to the motoneurons. This provides novel insight into how developing neural network excitability is tuned and how it can be entrained during the CP.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A distributed brain response predicting the facial expression of acute nociceptive pain

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Marie-Eve Picard
   2. Miriam Kunz
   3. Jen-I Chen
   4. Michel-Pierre Coll
   5. Etienne Vachon-Presseau
   6. Tor D Wager
   7. Pierre Rainville

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Picard et al. propose a Facial Expression Pain Signature (FEPS) derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to predict facial expressions associated with painful heat stimulation. This important work advances our understanding of the brain mechanisms associated with facial expressions of pain. It provides solid evidence that facial expressions of pain contain information that is complementary to other pain-related brain processes. The work will be of broad interest to researchers from varied fields ranging from neurosciences to psychology and affective sciences.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Increasing adult-born neurons protects mice from epilepsy

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Swati Jain
   2. John J LaFrancois
   3. Kasey Gerencer
   4. Justin J Botterill
   5. Meghan Kennedy
   6. Chiara Criscuolo
   7. Helen E Scharfman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this manuscript, Jain and colleagues explore whether increasing adult-born neurons is protective against status epilepticus and the development of spontaneous recurrent seizures (chronic epilepsy) in a mouse pilocarpine model of temporal lobe epilepsy. This is an important work that provides solid data, contradicting previous studies on suppressing chronic seizures by reduction in adult-born neurons.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Scaling of an antibody validation procedure enables quantification of antibody performance in major research applications

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Riham Ayoubi
   2. Joel Ryan
   3. Michael S Biddle
   4. Walaa Alshafie
   5. Maryam Fotouhi
   6. Sara Gonzalez Bolivar
   7. Vera Ruiz Moleon
   8. Peter Eckmann
   9. Donovan Worrall
   10. Ian McDowell
   11. Kathleen Southern
   12. Wolfgang Reintsch
   13. Thomas M Durcan
   14. Claire Brown
   15. Anita Bandrowski
   16. Harvinder Virk
   17. Aled M Edwards
   18. Peter McPherson
   19. Carl Laflamme

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Antibodies are some of the most critical tools in biomedical research. However, their quality and specificity vary significantly. This fundamental study provides guidelines for how the quality of an antibody should be assessed and recorded and provides compelling data on the selected antibodies. This paper will be of interest to researchers working in experimental cell biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Near-perfect precise on-target editing of human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Fanny-Mei Cloarec-Ung
   2. Jamie Beaulieu
   3. Arunan Suthananthan
   4. Bernhard Lehnertz
   5. Guy Sauvageau
   6. Hilary M Sheppard
   7. David JHF Knapp

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents an important methodology to increase the efficiency and precision of gene editing in human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. The evidence supporting the claims is convincing in that primitive LTC-ICs were minimally affected as a result of the editing procedure and the lack of edits at predicted off-target sites. The work will be of interest to biologists studying hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells and genome editing for potential clinical applications.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Statistical learning shapes pain perception and prediction independently of external cues

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Jakub Onysk
    2. Nicholas Gregory
    3. Mia Whitefield
    4. Maeghal Jain
    5. Georgia Turner
    6. Ben Seymour
    7. Flavia Mancini

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This study presents a valuable insight into a computational mechanism of pain perception. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is compelling. The work will be of interest to pain researchers working on computational models and cognitive mechanisms of pain in a Bayesian framework.

    Reviewed by eLife