eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Episodic long-term memory formation during slow-wave sleep

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Flavio J Schmidig
   2. Simon Ruch
   3. Katharina Henke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript supports the intriguing idea that some aspects of novel learning can occur during sleep and outside of awareness. The authors provide solid evidence that presenting participants with novel words and their translations during sleep, especially during slow oscillation troughs, leads to the ability to categorize the semantic meaning of those words during awake testing 36 hours later. These findings represent a valuable contribution to the literature on unconscious processing and learning during sleep, although the claim that the results reflect episodic memory formation, in particular, deviates from the typical use of this term in the literature.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Regulation of store-operated Ca2+ entry by IP3 receptors independent of their ability to release Ca2+

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Pragnya Chakraborty
   2. Bipan Kumar Deb
   3. Vikas Arige
   4. Thasneem Musthafa
   5. Sundeep Malik
   6. David I Yule
   7. Colin W Taylor
   8. Gaiti Hasan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this manuscript, Chakraborty et al address the role of IP3R1 in regulating store-operated calcium entry in neurons and neural progenitors. Long-standing observations in non-neuronal cells have shown that IP3Rs are not required for SOCE. In contrast to those findings, this manuscript determines that in neuronal cells, knockdown of IP3R1 suppresses SOCE by disrupting ER-plasma membrane contact sites. The paper supports a novel role for IP3R1 as a tether in promoting membrane contact sites which would have broad implications for a range of physiological processes including SOCE and lipid metabolism.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Passive exposure to task-relevant stimuli enhances categorization learning

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Christian Schmid
   2. Muhammad Haziq
   3. Melissa M Baese-Berk
   4. James M Murray
   5. Santiago Jaramillo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study reports valuable behavioral and computational observations regarding how passive exposure to auditory stimuli can facilitate auditory categorization. The combination of behavioral results in mice with a study of artificial neural network models provides solid evidence for the authors' conclusions. This paper will likely be of broad interest to the general neuroscience community.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Multifunctional requirements for ERK1/2 signaling in the development of ganglionic eminence derived glia and cortical inhibitory neurons

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Sara J. Knowles
   2. Michael C. Holter
   3. Guohui Li
   4. George R. Bjorklund
   5. Katherina P. Rees
   6. Johan S. Martinez-Fuentes
   7. Kenji J. Nishimura
   8. Ariana E. Afshari
   9. Noah Fry
   10. April M Stafford
   11. Daniel Vogt
   12. Marco Mangone
   13. Trent Anderson
   14. Jason M. Newbern

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important study on the role of the Ras/MEK/Erk signaling cascade in brain development, with both theoretical and practical implications in multiple fields. The authors reveal functional redundancy and shared function for Erk1 and Erk2 in determining medial ganglionic eminence derived glial number, and exclude a role for Erk1 and Erk2 in the regulation of GABAergic neuron number or initial specification of GABAergic identity. They combine multiple methods including Ribotags, electrophysiology, and chemogenetic stimulation using DREADDs towards comprehensive conclusions. Reviewers expressed concerns about the coherence of the findings, and about the selection of controls mouse lines. Heterozygous ERK1/2 mice are used as 'het controls' throughout the manuscript, however, reviewers felt that there was not sufficient evidence that ERK levels in heterozygous mice are similar to wildtype mice. Nevertheless, these compelling findings will be of interest to a broad readership, and especially readers interested in kinase function and neurodevelopmental syndromes.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Behavioral entrainment to rhythmic auditory stimulation can be modulated by tACS depending on the electrical stimulation field properties

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yuranny Cabral-Calderin
   2. Daniela van Hinsberg
   3. Axel Thielscher
   4. Molly J Henry

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This detailed and well powered manuscript explores auditory perception of modulated noise in the presence of transcranial alternating-current stimulation (tACS) and shows valuable results suggesting that there are subject-specific effects when the phase of 2-Hz tACS varies relative to the phase of the noise modulation. The strength of the evidence is mixed. There is convincing evidence that tACS alters perception significantly in individuals; however, the effects are inconsistent across subjects and even across sessions, frustrating attempts to draw conclusions about the underlying mechanisms of the idiosyncratic effects. Despite these limitations, the paper will be of great interest to researchers interested in determining when and how tACS influences neural processes, especially those interested in neural entrainment and its relationship to perception.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Brain areas for reversible symbolic reference, a potential singularity of the human brain

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Timo van Kerkoerle
   2. Louise Pape
   3. Milad Ekramnia
   4. Xiaoxia Feng
   5. Jordy Tasserie
   6. Morgan Dupont
   7. Xiaolian Li
   8. Béchir Jarraya
   9. Wim Vanduffel
   10. Stanislas Dehaene
   11. Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     fMRI was used to address an important aspect of human cognition - the capacity for structured representations and symbolic processing - in a cross-species comparison with macaques; the experimental design probed implicit symbolic processing through reversal of learned stimulus pairs. The authors present solid evidence in humans that helps elucidate the role of brain networks in symbolic processing, however the evidence from macaques was necessarily incomplete (e.g., hard-to-quantify differences in learning trajectories and lived experience between species).

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Identifying metabolic features of colorectal cancer liability using Mendelian randomization

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Caroline Bull
   2. Emma Hazelwood
   3. Joshua A Bell
   4. Vanessa Tan
   5. Andrei-Emil Constantinescu
   6. Carolina Borges
   7. Danny Legge
   8. Kimberley Burrows
   9. Jeroen R Huyghe
   10. Hermann Brenner
   11. Sergi Castellvi-Bel
   12. Andrew T Chan
   13. Sun-Seog Kweon
   14. Loic Le Marchand
   15. Li Li
   16. Iona Cheng
   17. Rish K Pai
   18. Jane C Figueiredo
   19. Neil Murphy
   20. Marc J Gunter
   21. Nicholas J Timpson
   22. Emma E Vincent

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The manuscript by Bull et al provides valuable information on the relationship between metabolic features, in particular different lipoproteins and fatty acids, and colorectal cancer. They use solid methods and combine different data sources to analyze forward and reverse Mendelian Randomizations that support their claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Ubiquitin ligase and signalling hub MYCBP2 is required for efficient EPHB2 tyrosine kinase receptor function

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Chao Chang
   2. Sara L Banerjee
   3. Sung Soon Park
   4. Xiao Lei Zhang
   5. David Cotnoir-White
   6. Karla J Opperman
   7. Muriel Desbois
   8. Brock Grill
   9. Artur Kania

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study identifies an Ephrin type-B Receptor 2 (EPHB2) interactor, MYCBP2, as a potential regulator of EPHB2 stability and function. In contrast to expectations, based on MYCBP2 function in the ubiquitin pathway, loss of function of MYCBP2 resulted in less EPHB2 receptor and defective EPHB2 function. The paper is supported by a largely convincing set of biochemical, cell culture and in vivo experiments.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Detection of new pioneer transcription factors as cell-type-specific nucleosome binders

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Yunhui Peng
   2. Wei Song
   3. Vladimir B Teif
   4. Ivan Ovcharenko
   5. David Landsman
   6. Anna R Panchenko

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study aims to identify pioneer transcription factors, which are defined as transcription factors that compete with nucleosomes for DNA binding. The authors provide methods for identifying pioneer transcription factors on a cell type basis, using nucleosome positioning and motif information across different cell lines. The evidence to support the claims is largely solid. This work will be of interest to computational and molecular biologists working on transcription factors.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Interface-acting nucleotide controls polymerization dynamics at microtubule plus- and minus-ends

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Lauren A McCormick
    2. Joseph M Cleary
    3. William O Hancock
    4. Luke M Rice

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This important study combines in vitro experiments with simulations to identify the mechanisms governing modulation of microtubule dynamics by GTP hydrolysis. The authors introduce a convincing new approach by using a mixed GDP/GMPCPP lattice and varying GDP concentration to reveal that the nucleotide at the interface of two tubulin dimers determines the strength of the interaction between two dimers. Overall, the findings will be of interest to biophysicists and cell biologists, especially in the field of microtubule biology.

    Reviewed by eLife