eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Conditional blastocyst complementation of a defective Foxa2 lineage efficiently promotes the generation of the whole lung

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Akihiro Miura
   2. Hemanta Sarmah
   3. Junichi Tanaka
   4. Youngmin Hwang
   5. Anri Sawada
   6. Yuko Shimamura
   7. Takehiro Otoshi
   8. Yuri Kondo
   9. Yinshan Fang
   10. Dai Shimizu
   11. Zurab Ninish
   12. Jake Le Suer
   13. Nicole C Dubois
   14. Jennifer Davis
   15. Shinichi Toyooka
   16. Jun Wu
   17. Jianwen Que
   18. Finn J Hawkins
   19. Chyuan-Sheng Lin
   20. Munemasa Mori

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This current study provides a new model of lung agenesis to explore the generation of the ability of blastocyst complementation to generate an entire organ. These studies will provide new avenues for organ bioengineering and additional insight into early contribution of mesoendoderm to lung development.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. SIRT2 inhibition protects against cardiac hypertrophy and ischemic injury

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Xiaoyan Yang
   2. Hsiang-Chun Chang
   3. Yuki Tatekoshi
   4. Amir Mahmoodzadeh
   5. Maryam Balibegloo
   6. Zeinab Najafi
   7. Rongxue Wu
   8. Chunlei Chen
   9. Tatsuya Sato
   10. Jason Shapiro
   11. Hossein Ardehali

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this study, Yang et al. have shown that SIRT2 has adverse effects on the heart in response to injury. Further, they demonstrate that deletion of Sirt2 is protective through stabilization and increased nuclear translocation of NRF2, which leads to increased expression of antioxidant genes. They also show that pharmacological inhibition of SIRT2 protects the heart against the development of cardiac hypertrophy.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Syntaxin-6 delays prion protein fibril formation and prolongs the presence of toxic aggregation intermediates

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Daljit Sangar
   2. Elizabeth Hill
   3. Kezia Jack
   4. Mark Batchelor
   5. Beenaben Mistry
   6. Juan M Ribes
   7. Graham S Jackson
   8. Simon Mead
   9. Jan Bieschke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors attempted to show that syntaxin 6 (Stx6) delays PrP fibril formation and in presence of Stx6, PrP forms amorphous aggregates which are more toxic to neuronal cells, indicative of Stx6's anti-chaperone activity. This useful study has potential to provide important understanding of the molecular mechanism of PrP aggregation and neurotoxicity. However, the evidence supporting the physiological relevance and robustness of the assays is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Vicia faba SV channel VfTPC1 is a hyperexcitable variant of plant vacuole Two Pore Channels

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Jinping Lu
   2. Ingo Dreyer
   3. Miles Sasha Dickinson
   4. Sabine Panzer
   5. Dawid Jaślan
   6. Carlos Navarro-Retamal
   7. Dietmar Geiger
   8. Ulrich Terpitz
   9. Dirk Becker
   10. Robert M Stroud
   11. Irene Marten
   12. Rainer Hedrich

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Plant intracellular ion channels are poorly understood. In this important manuscript, patch-clamp is used to define functional differences between two cation channels present in the vacuole of different plants. The authors find a calcium-biding site whose absence or presence modulate activation at lower voltages and is responsible for increased excitability in the vacuole of the faba bean plant. The experimental evidence presented is convincing and findings have practical implications for the field of plant electrophysiology and channel biophysics.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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