eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Transposons are important contributors to gene expression variability under selection in rice populations

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Raúl Castanera
   2. Noemia Morales-Díaz
   3. Sonal Gupta
   4. Michael Purugganan
   5. Josep M Casacuberta

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study reports on the role of transposable elements in gene expression variation in rice and how TE-associated expression changes could have been selected during domestication. The combination of evidence from linkage studies and selection scans for a subset of insertions is convincing, although it is difficult to know in how many cases linkage of TE insertions to other regulatory variants is responsible for altered gene expression and in how many cases the TE insertions themselves are the bona fide cause of altered gene expression. The work will be of interest to colleagues working on the role of transposable elements in adaptation and to biologists working on domestication.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. RNA-binding deficient TDP-43 drives cognitive decline in a mouse model of TDP-43 proteinopathy

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Julie C Necarsulmer
   2. Jeremy M Simon
   3. Baggio A Evangelista
   4. Youjun Chen
   5. Xu Tian
   6. Sara Nafees
   7. Ariana B Marquez
   8. Huijun Jiang
   9. Ping Wang
   10. Deepa Ajit
   11. Viktoriya D Nikolova
   12. Kathryn M Harper
   13. J Ashley Ezzell
   14. Feng-Chang Lin
   15. Adriana S Beltran
   16. Sheryl S Moy
   17. Todd J Cohen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Necarsulmer et al describe an interesting new mouse model of TDP-43 proteinopathy in which gene editing was used to introduce a K145Q acetylation-mimic mutation previously shown to impair RNA-binding capacity and induce downstream misregulation of target genes. Mice homozygous for this mutation are convincingly shown to display cognitive/behavioral impairment, TDP-43 phosphorylation and insolubility, and changes in gene expression and splicing. This novel mouse model replicates some key hallmarks of human frontotemporal lobar degeneration and will be an important contribution to the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Npr3 regulates neural crest and cranial placode progenitors formation through its dual function as clearance and signaling receptor

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Arun Devotta
   2. Hugo Juraver-Geslin
   3. Casey Griffin
   4. Jean-Pierre Saint-Jeannet

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental work reports the unique finding that specific ligands and receptors in the natriuretic peptide signaling pathway act during early embryogenesis to discriminate between neural crest and cranial placode fates using two distinct mechanisms. This work will be of broad interest to both developmental and cell biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Cytoarchitectonic, receptor distribution and functional connectivity analyses of the macaque frontal lobe

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Lucija Rapan
   2. Sean Froudist-Walsh
   3. Meiqi Niu
   4. Ting Xu
   5. Ling Zhao
   6. Thomas Funck
   7. Xiao-Jing Wang
   8. Katrin Amunts
   9. Nicola Palomero-Gallagher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Rapan et al. report a new multi-modal parcellation of the macaque frontal cortex based on cytoarchitectural division complemented with functional connectivity and neurochemical data. This builds on prior highly influential maps that subdivide the cortex based on anatomical fingerprints, both confirming these prior reports and defining new subdivisions. As such, this is a fundamental contribution with compelling results that can guide future neuroscientific research into the function of the frontal lobes.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Structure of the HIV immature lattice allows for essential lattice remodeling within budded virions

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Sikao Guo
   2. Ipsita Saha
   3. Saveez Saffarian
   4. Margaret E Johnson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is a valuable study, carried out in a solid and comprehensive manner. The results advance the understanding of one of the steps of the HIV life cycle, via a better description of the mechanisms underlying Gag-Pol dimerization.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Accumbens cholinergic interneurons dynamically promote dopamine release and enable motivation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Ali Mohebi
   2. Val L Collins
   3. Joshua D Berke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study by Mohebi, Collins, and Berke presents valuable findings on the control of the neurotransmitter dopamine by cholinergic interneurons, a sparse but important subclass of neurons with the ventral striatum, a key brain region involved in motivational behaviors. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although the inclusion of a key experiment presenting causality between cholinergic neuron activity and dopamine release during behavior is needed. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists in the fields of motivation and decision-making.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Two conserved vocal central pattern generators broadly tuned for fast and slow rates generate species-specific vocalizations in Xenopus clawed frogs

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Ayako Yamaguchi
   2. Manon Peltier

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important paper compares the neural basis for different calling songs in five species of clawed Xenopus frogs using neural activity recordings combined with lesions of pathways and stimulation of specific parts of the circuit. The evidence supporting the claims is mostly solid but in part incomplete. The work will be of broad interest to neurophysiologists beyond the vocalization topic.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. APE1 recruits ATRIP to ssDNA in an RPA-dependent and -independent manner to promote the ATR DNA damage response

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Yunfeng Lin
   2. Jia Li
   3. Haichao Zhao
   4. Anne McMahon
   5. Kelly McGhee
   6. Shan Yan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway, single-stranded DNAs (ssDNAs) activate a downstream kinase cascade with ATR/Chk1. Replication protein A (RPA) is believed to be essential for DDR activation by recruiting an ATR-partner protein, ATRIP, to RPA-coated ssDNAs through direct protein-protein interaction. This important paper provides convincing results, showing that an AP endonuclease, APE1 (APEX1), plays a role not only in RPA-dependent but also in RPA-independent recruitment of ATRIP on ssDNAs for DDR activation.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Transcriptomic profiling of tissue environments critical for post-embryonic patterning and morphogenesis of zebrafish skin

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Andrew J Aman
   2. Lauren M Saunders
   3. August A Carr
   4. Sanjay Srivatasan
   5. Colten Eberhard
   6. Blake Carrington
   7. Dawn Watkins-Chow
   8. William J Pavan
   9. Cole Trapnell
   10. David M Parichy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides a clearly presented and thoughtfully analyzed single cell-resolution dataset of gene expression in wildtype and mutant zebrafish skin. These data are used by the authors to develop and test hypotheses about cell lineage relationships and signaling interactions between cell types in the skin, allowing them to identify roles for several signaling pathways and the hypodermis in scale and pigment cell development. These findings constitute a fundamental contribution to the field, and the rigor of the analyses make this manuscript compelling.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Bacterial meningitis in the early postnatal mouse studied at single-cell resolution

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Jie Wang
    2. Amir Rattner
    3. Jeremy Nathans

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This study presents valuable findings on the changes of immune cell populations and stromal cells occurring at the CNS borders in a neonatal bacterial meningitis model, focusing on fibroblasts, macrophages and endothelial cells. The study provides solid snRNA-seq dataset and high quality immune fluorescence images of dissected brain border regions, that will be useful for the community. These observations and datasets will be of interest to the neuro-immunology community.

    Reviewed by eLife