eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. An ancient transcription factor functions as the master regulator of primary cilia formation

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Weihua Wang
   2. Xiqi Zhang
   3. Yaxuan Qiu
   4. Xiangrui Meng
   5. Sitong Cheng
   6. Yutong Chen
   7. Siqi Liu
   8. Wenhui Chen
   9. Jiayan Yi
   10. Xiwen You
   11. Hongni Liu
   12. Junqiao Xing
   13. Cheng Xu
   14. Haochen Jiang
   15. Haibo Wang
   16. Guangmei Tian
   17. Zhangfeng Hu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study identified XAP5 as an ancient transcriptional regulator critical for primary ciliogenesis. The evidence supporting the conceptual framework linking evolutionary conservation to functional specialization in primary ciliogenesis remains incomplete. This work will be of interest to developmental biologists and to those studying diseases caused by ciliopathies.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. NK2R signaling governs intestinal lipid mobilization and mucosal inflammation

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Pedro A Perez
   2. Chung-Chih Liu
   3. Alessandra Ferrari
   4. Nicole K Littlejohn
   5. John Paul Kennelly
   6. Emma Marie Robinson
   7. Vân TB Nguyen-Tran
   8. Jon Athanacio
   9. Sean B Joesph
   10. Zaid Amso
   11. Peter Tontonoz
   12. Supriya Srinivasan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study on the role of the neurokinin-2 receptor (NK2R) as a regulatory node connecting intestinal lipid metabolism, mucosal immunity, and the gut microbiome, bidirectionally regulating enterocyte lipid uptake, lipid droplet storage, chylomicron output, and systemic metabolic parameters in DIO mice. The authors present solid evidence linking Tacr2 deletion to reprogrammed epithelial lineage allocation, dampened immune gene expression, and male-biased protection from DSS colitis, despite dysbiotic microbiota. However, the causal evidence for some mechanistic and pro-inflammatory NK2R claims remains incomplete and potentially confounding, requiring additional cell-type-specific and functional experiments.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. A spatiotemporal transcriptomic atlas of the mouse placenta reveals glycogen cell-mediated metabolic support essential for fetal viability

   This article has 24 authors:

   1. Yuting Fu
   2. Xiaoqi Zeng
   3. Yifang Liu
   4. Shikai Jia
   5. Yujia Jiang
   6. Jia Ping Tan
   7. Yue Yuan
   8. Tianchang Xia
   9. Yun Mei
   10. Shan Wen
   11. Xiaojing Liu
   12. Yue You
   13. Weike Pei
   14. Chengshuo Yang
   15. Sida Shao
   16. Junhua Shen
   17. Liangshan Mu
   18. Xiaoxue Ma
   19. Matthew Paul McCormack
   20. Saifeng Cheng
   21. Luyi Tian
   22. Longqi Liu
   23. Xiaoyu Wei
   24. Xiaodong Liu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports a spatiotemporal atlas of mouse placental development and explores the role of glycogen trophoblast cells in fetal viability. Solid data are presented to support the main conclusion. This work will be of great interest to developmental DNA reproductive biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Autonomic reflex plasticity associates with time-dependent SUDEP susceptibility in a murine model with hyperreactive stress circuits

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Sandy E Saunders
   2. Kaylie E Dow
   3. Grace E Bostic
   4. Jeffery A Boychuk
   5. Jamie L Maguire
   6. Carie R Boychuk

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings regarding cardiac and autonomic effects of seizures and epilepsy, with relevance to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). They present solid evidence that genetic deletion of the potassium-chloride co-transporter in hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neurons exacerbates bradycardia and enhances autonomic disturbances in a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on epilepsy, the HPA axis, and autonomic control.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Parallel Wires: A Conserved Principle of Contralateral-Ipsilateral Segregation in the Visual Corpus Callosum

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Jiaowen Wang
   2. Yanming Wang
   3. Yiping An
   4. Shishuo Chen
   5. Benedictor Alexander Nguchu
   6. Huan Wang
   7. Muhammad Mohsin Pathan
   8. Yueyi Yu
   9. Sinan Yang
   10. Ying-Qiu Zheng
   11. Yang Ji
   12. Hao Wang
   13. Yifeng Zhou
   14. Bensheng Qiu
   15. Xiaoxiao Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important cross-species study tests whether the corpus callosum contains parallel, segregated pathways for ipsilateral and contralateral visual-field information, rather than mixed inputs from the two hemispheres. A major strength is its use of a combination of high-field functional magnetic resonance inaging and Bayesian population receptive field (pRF) modelling in humans with viral tracing in mice to offer complementary evidence for pathway segregation. At present, the evidence supporting the authors' claims is incomplete and would benefit from ruling out potential confounds that could mimic tract segregation in the human white-matter pRF data and the mouse anatomical tracing results, and from sharpening claims about laminar specificity.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A retinotopic reference frame for space throughout human visual cortex

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Martin Szinte
   2. Gilles de Hollander
   3. Marco Aqil
   4. Inês Veríssimo
   5. Serge Dumoulin
   6. Tomas Knapen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a useful study, bolstering our understanding of spatial reference frames of visual perception. The high-resolution data and sophisticated analyses confirm and enhance earlier findings that visual representations operate in a predominantly retinotopic reference frame throughout the visual hierarchy in the human cortex. However, these analyses are currently incomplete, leaving open the possibility that eye-position gain and or spatiotopic representations may also be present.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Identification of a somatic H3K23me3 methyltransferase SET-19 in C. elegans

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Mingjing Xu
   2. Zixue Fan
   3. Chaoyue Yan
   4. Xiangyang Chen
   5. Xinya Huang
   6. Chengming Zhu
   7. Minjie Hong
   8. Jiewei Cheng
   9. Xinhao Hou
   10. Shuju Li
   11. Mengfeng Li
   12. Zhongying Zhao
   13. Yunyu Shi
   14. Meng Huang
   15. Shouhong Guang
   16. Xuezhu Feng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides fundamental insight by identifying C. elegans SET-19 as a key enzyme that deposits H3K23me to somatic chromatin. The evidence is compelling, using a broad and modern toolkit of biochemical, genetic, and genome-wide analyses that consistently support the main claims. The significance of the study is further strengthened by the fact that H3K23me is an understudied histone modification, which is also conserved in mammals.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Nuclear CK1δ as a critical determinant of PER:CRY complex dynamics and circadian period

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Fidel Emmanuel Serrano
   2. Daniela Marzoll
   3. Bianca Ruppert
   4. Axel CR Diernfellner
   5. Michael Brunner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines the subcellular dynamics of the mammalian circadian clock proteins PER2, CRY1, and CK1, providing solid evidence that CK1 modulates the PER2-CRY1 interaction and drives the cytoplasmic localization of PER2 complexes. This could play a key role in modulating transcriptional repression by PER2, CRY1, and CK that contributes to the molecular circadian clock. There are minor concerns regarding the overexpression of the clock proteins in this study.

     [Editors' note: this paper was previously reviewed by another journal.]

   Reviewed by eLife

9. The Ingestive Response Reflects Neural Dynamics in Gustatory Cortex

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Natasha Baas-Thomas
   2. Abuzar Mahmood
   3. Narendra Mukherjee
   4. Kathleen C Maigler
   5. Yixi Wang
   6. Donald B Katz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study addresses an important question in gustatory neuroscience by developing a machine-learning classifier to identify distinct ingestive orofacial movement subtypes from electromyographic recordings and relating their dynamics to population-level activity in the gustatory cortex. The evidence that transitions in cortical ensemble firing are temporally associated with reorganization of ingestive movement patterns is convincing, though some aspects of the behavioral classification and neural analyses require further validation and clarification. The work provides a technically innovative framework for linking neural state dynamics to the motor expression of taste-guided decisions.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Cis-regulation and natural selection in the evolution of human DNA methylation

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Zhenzhen Ma
    2. Alexander L Starr
    3. David Gokhman
    4. Hunter B Fraser

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study presents an important examination of the role of cis-acting versus trans-acting genetic variation in DNA methylation divergence between humans and chimpanzees and its relationship to gene expression. By differentiating fused interspecies tetraploid cell lines into multiple cell types, the study provides compelling evidence that cis-acting changes predominate in DNA methylation divergence. The evidence linking directional methylation divergence to lineage-specific selection and, particularly, to adaptive human phenotypes is less clear. This work will be of interest to biologists and evolutionary anthropologists studying the evolution and genetics of gene regulation, particularly in primates.

    Reviewed by eLife