eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. The ER folding sensor UGGT1 acts on TAPBPR-chaperoned peptide-free MHC I

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Lina Sagert
   2. Christian Winter
   3. Ina Ruppert
   4. Maximilian Zehetmaier
   5. Christoph Thomas
   6. Robert Tampé

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study reports a complete in vitro system where different steps and direct interactions between different components of MHCI maturation can be monitored, hence leading to a better mechanistic understanding of MHC I maturation. The evidence supporting the findings is currently incomplete and would benefit from clarification of some key issues. This work will be of interest to immunologists and biochemists.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Control of telomere length in yeast by SUMOylated PCNA and the Elg1 PCNA unloader

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Pragyan Singh
   2. Inbal Gazy
   3. Martin Kupiec

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study aims to discover the mechanisms governing the switch between conventional DNA replication and the specialized mechanism of telomere end replication. Solid genetic and biochemical assays suggest an interplay between sumoylated PCNA and chromosome terminal capping proteins. The questions addressed have implications for several fields, such as genome stability.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. An ecological network approach for detecting and validating influential organisms for rice growth

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Masayuki Ushio
   2. Hiroki Saito
   3. Motoaki Tojo
   4. Atsushi J Nagano

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     There is a tremendous need to increase agricultural productivity with means that are both practical and efficient. Drawing on data from variable field environments, this important study provides a theoretical framework for the identification of new factors with presumed relevance for crop growth. This framework can be applied in the context of both agricultural and ecological studies. There is solid evidence for several of the authors' claims, but the impact of the study is limited due to missing functional validation of candidate species in the field. Plant biologists and ecologists working in agricultural and natural environments will find the work interesting.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Higher social tolerance is associated with more complex facial behavior in macaques

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Alan V Rincon
   2. Bridget M Waller
   3. Julie Duboscq
   4. Alexander Mielke
   5. Claire Pérez
   6. Peter R Clark
   7. Jérôme Micheletta

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study shows important evidence of the correlation between social tolerance and communicative complexity in a comparison of three macaque species. Notably, the authors use an innovative, detailed methodology for quantifying facial expressions during social interactions. The results are convincing regarding a positive association between social complexity and facial behaviour, which should stimulate further comparative research in this field.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Microhomology-mediated circular DNA formation from oligonucleosomal fragments during spermatogenesis

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Jun Hu
   2. Zhe Zhang
   3. Sai Xiao
   4. Yalei Cao
   5. Yinghong Chen
   6. Jiaming Weng
   7. Hui Jiang
   8. Wei Li
   9. Jia-Yu Chen
   10. Chao Liu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides important information on the biogenesis of eccDNAs during spermatogenesis. The data presented are solid and supportive of the concussion that eccDNAs in spermatogenic cells are not derived from miotic recombination hotspots but rather represent oligonucleosomal DNA fragments from apoptotic male germ cells, whose ends are ligated through microhomology-mediated end-joining. This work is of interest to researchers working on germ cell biology and cancer biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Spindle assembly checkpoint-dependent mitotic delay is required for cell division in absence of centrosomes

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. KC Farrell
   2. Jennifer T Wang
   3. Tim Stearns

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work explores how centrosomes, which function as the primary microtubule organizing center in animal cells, regulate cell division by examining the process in cells in which centrosome formation has been inhibited. The carefully conducted experiments provide convincing support for the important observation that elongated, but successful, mitosis observed in cells lacking centrosomes is due to delays in cell cycle progression.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Remapping in a recurrent neural network model of navigation and context inference

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Isabel IC Low
   2. Lisa M Giocomo
   3. Alex H Williams

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important work provides evidence that artificial recurrent neural networks can be used to investigate neural mechanisms underlying reversible remapping of spatial representations. Authors perform convincing state of the art analyses showing how population activity preserves the encoding of spatial position despite remappings due to the tracking of an internal variable. This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists studying contextual computations, neural representation of space and links between artificial neural networks and the brain.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Judging the difficulty of perceptual decisions

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Anne Löffler
   2. Ariel Zylberberg
   3. Michael N Shadlen
   4. Daniel M Wolpert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This behavioral modeling study investigates how humans make decisions on the difficulty of perceptual categorization tasks. The study finds that such judgments are best described by an evidence-accumulation model that includes a dynamic comparison of difficulty-related evidence, which terminates when the difference in evidence between two tasks reaches a predetermined bound – a valuable finding for research in perceptual decision-making. The paper provides compelling behavioral evidence for the proposed model through: 1) quantitative model selection/validation procedures, and 2) qualitative analyses of the relation between the optimal model of the task and the human data (and the proposed model).

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Styxl2 regulates de novo sarcomere assembly by binding to non-muscle myosin IIs and promoting their degradation

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Xianwei Chen
   2. Yanfeng Li
   3. Jin Xu
   4. Yong Cui
   5. Qian Wu
   6. Haidi Yin
   7. Yuying Li
   8. Chuan Gao
   9. Liwen Jiang
   10. Huating Wang
   11. Zilong Wen
   12. Zhongping Yao
   13. Zhenguo Wu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper presents an important finding: that Styxl2, a poorly characterized pseudo-phosphatase, plays a role in the sarcomere assembly by promoting the degradation of non-muscle myosins. The genetic evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, although future work will be needed to elucidate the functional role and biochemical mechanism of autophagic degradation of non-muscle myosins. This work will be of interest to biologists studying muscle development, cell biology, and proteolysis.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Gene regulatory patterning codes in early cell fate specification of the C. elegans embryo

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Alison G Cole
    2. Tamar Hashimshony
    3. Zhuo Du
    4. Itai Yanai

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This valuable work fills a gap in the mapping of gene expression patterns in the early embryo of C. elegans. The presented data are solid and provides a resource for future analysis.

    Reviewed by eLife