eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. C. difficile may be overdiagnosed in adults and is a prevalent commensal in infants

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Pamela Ferretti
   2. Jakob Wirbel
   3. Oleksandr M Maistrenko
   4. Thea Van Rossum
   5. Renato Alves
   6. Anthony Fullam
   7. Wasiu Akanni
   8. Christian Schudoma
   9. Anna Schwarz
   10. Roman Thielemann
   11. Leonie Thomas
   12. Stefanie Kandels
   13. Rajna Hercog
   14. Anja Telzerow
   15. Ivica Letunic
   16. Michael Kuhn
   17. Georg Zeller
   18. Thomas SB Schmidt
   19. Peer Bork

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study points out discrepancies between the clinical diagnosis of Clostridioides difficile infection and the lack of detectable C. difficile in gut microbiome samples, as well as different relationships between asymptomatic C. difficile carriage and adult or infant gut microbiota compositions. While the solid analysis of a comprehensive and diverse metagenomic dataset suggests an over-diagnosis of C. difficile infection and an under-diagnosis of other putative enteric pathogens, the work requires addressing the detection limitations of the approach to be more convincing. This work will interest microbiologists and clinicians concerned with understanding the role of C. difficile in gut microbiota health and dysbiosis.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Heterogeneous presynaptic receptive fields contribute to directional tuning in starburst amacrine cells

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. John A Gaynes
   2. Samuel A Budoff
   3. Michael J Grybko
   4. Alon Poleg-Polsky

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study uses a combination of computational modeling and glutamate imaging to show how a particular synaptic organization referred to as space-time wiring contributes minimally to a dendritic computation that occurs in the retina. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is compelling, incorporating new findings regarding dynamic receptive field properties, an improvement over previous modeling and experimental results based on static visual stimuli. The work will be of interest to retinal neurobiologists and neurophysiologists interested in dendritic computations.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. 14-3-3 protein augments the protein stability of phosphorylated spastin and promotes the recovery of spinal cord injury through its agonist intervention

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Qiuling Liu
   2. Hua Yang
   3. Jianxian Luo
   4. Cheng Peng
   5. Ke Wang
   6. Guowei Zhang
   7. Hongsheng Lin
   8. Zhisheng Ji

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The finding that Fusicoccin (FC-A) promotes locomotor recovery after spinal cord injury is supported by solid data, and the idea of harnessing small molecules that may affect protein-protein interactions to promote axon regeneration is valuable. The evidence showing that 14-3-3 and spastin interact and that 14-3-3 enhances spastin function and stability in cells is also solid.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Robust optogenetic inhibition with red-light-sensitive anion-conducting channelrhodopsins

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Johannes Oppermann
   2. Andrey Rozenberg
   3. Thomaz Fabrin
   4. Cristian González-Cabrera
   5. Rafael Parker
   6. Oded Béjà
   7. Matthias Prigge
   8. Peter Hegemann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study describes the discovery and further engineering of a red light-activated, chloride-conducting Channelrhodopsin (ACR) that could be used to inhibit neuronal activity. The evidence for the spectral confirmation and biophysical characterization of MsACR and raACR, and ion selectivity are solid; however, the evidence supporting the use of the tools in vivo is incomplete and missing proper controls. In addition, benchmarking against other inhibitory tools is somewhat missing. With the in vivo part strengthened, this paper would interest neuroscientists seeking more efficient ways to inhibit neuronal activity.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. ER-to-lysosome Ca2+ refilling followed by K+ efflux-coupled store-operated Ca2+ entry in inflammasome activation and metabolic inflammation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Hyereen Kang
   2. Seong Woo Choi
   3. Joo Young Kim
   4. Soo-Jin Oh
   5. Sung Joon Kim
   6. Myung-Shik Lee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This useful study proposes a role of lysosomal Ca2+ release in inflammasome signaling and metabolic inflammation. While the proposed model would be of considerable interest to the field of immunology if validated, the experimental approaches to study calcium dynamics are problematic, with one of several concerns being the transfection efficiency. The major claims of the paper are thus only incompletely supported.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Spectrally and temporally resolved estimation of neural signal diversity

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Pedro A.M. Mediano
   2. Fernando E. Rosas
   3. Andrea I. Luppi
   4. Valdas Noreika
   5. Anil K. Seth
   6. Robin L. Carhart-Harris
   7. Lionel Barnett
   8. Daniel Bor

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper describes a new complexity estimator for time series based on state-space modeling, which can directly decompose signal entropy in both time and frequency. The authors compare their estimator to Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity using a variety of time series neurophysiological data from humans and non-human primates. This represents a potentially valuable methodological contribution for existing studies using LZ complexity in their analyses, although the paper currently ignores much of the existing literature which has already developed related solutions to the same issues. The strength of the evidence supporting the superiority of the new complexity metric is currently incomplete, and should be backed by additional analyses.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Molecular classification and tumor microenvironment characteristics in pheochromocytomas

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Sen Qin
   2. Yawei Xu
   3. Shimiao Yu
   4. Wencong Han
   5. Shiheng Fan
   6. Wenxiang Ai
   7. Kenan Zhang
   8. Yizhou Wang
   9. Xuehong Zhou
   10. Qi Shen
   11. Kan Gong
   12. Luyang Sun
   13. Zheng Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study advances our understanding of the potential therapeutic strategies for the treatment of pheochromocytomas using single-cell transcriptomics. The authors propose a new molecular classification criterion based on the characterization of tumor microenvironmental features, based on solid evidence. The work, which could be improved further through delineating the choice of the PASS scoring system, will be of broad interest to clinicians, medical researchers, and scientists working in the field of pheochromocytoma.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Gradient organisation of functional connectivity within resting state networks is present from 25 weeks gestation in the human fetal brain

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Jucha Willers Moore
   2. Siân Wilson
   3. Marianne Oldehinkel
   4. Lucilio Cordero-Grande
   5. Alena Uus
   6. Vanessa Kyriakopoulou
   7. Eugene P Duff
   8. Jonathan O’Muircheartaigh
   9. Mary A Rutherford
   10. Laura C Andreae
   11. Joseph V Hajnal
   12. A David Edwards
   13. Christian F Beckmann
   14. Tomoki Arichi
   15. Vyacheslav R Karolis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents important findings indicating that gradients of functional connectivity are present in the human foetal brain, and that these gradients develop further during gestation, particularly in multisensory brain regions. The study uses state-of-the-art connectomic mapping techniques. However, recent findings suggest that such gradients may reflect confounds within the analysis technique more than underlying brain functions. The evidence for the authors' claims therefore currently appears inadequate as it does not account for these potential confounds.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. C9orf72 polyPR directly binds to various nuclear transport components

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hamidreza Jafarinia
   2. Erik van der Giessen
   3. Patrick R Onck

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides an important starting point for unraveling the molecular basis of the pathological phenotypes of the repeat expansion in the gene associated with open reading frame 72 in human chromosome 9. The coarse-grained simulation method used by the authors goes beyond the state of the art, investigating a compelling number of binding partners. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although experimental validation of the results would strengthen the major conclusions of the work. The work will be of broad interest to biophysicists and biochemists.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Attention modulates human visual responses to objects by tuning sharpening

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Narges Doostani
    2. Gholam-Ali Hossein-Zadeh
    3. Radoslaw M Cichy
    4. Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study has the potential to shed mechanistic light on how attention mechanisms that influence competition between multiple visual stimuli are modulated by the relative neural similarity of these stimuli. The study provides convincing data that will also be used for future modeling efforts. The study will be of interest to researchers working on the neural basis of visual attention.

    Reviewed by eLife