eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Time encoding migrates from prefrontal cortex to dorsal striatum during learning of a self-timed response duration task

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Gabriela C Tunes
   2. Eliezyer Fermino de Oliveira
   3. Estevão UP Vieira
   4. Marcelo S Caetano
   5. André M Cravo
   6. Marcelo Bussotti Reyes

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary

     This study investigates the question of whether distinct brain areas differentially encode time during the learning of a simple motor timing task. The key novel result is that early in training the dynamics of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) provides the best code for time, but later in training, the basal ganglia and in particular, the striatum provides a better code. In addition, the study shows that inactivation of mPFC produces a delayed learning effect, while inactivation of the striatum after learning led to impaired performance. The observation that temporal coding and the necessity of brain area for task performance transfers from medial prefrontal cortex to the striatum during learning is an intriguing observation for our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying temporal processing in sensorimotor control.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Diverse ancestry whole-genome sequencing association study identifies TBX5 and PTK7 as susceptibility genes for posterior urethral valves

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Melanie MY Chan
   2. Omid Sadeghi-Alavijeh
   3. Filipa M Lopes
   4. Alina C Hilger
   5. Horia C Stanescu
   6. Catalin D Voinescu
   7. Glenda M Beaman
   8. William G Newman
   9. Marcin Zaniew
   10. Stefanie Weber
   11. Yee Mang Ho
   12. John O Connolly
   13. Dan Wood
   14. Carlo Maj
   15. Alexander Stuckey
   16. Athanasios Kousathanas
   17. Genomics England Research Consortium
   18. Robert Kleta
   19. Adrian S Woolf
   20. Detlef Bockenhauer
   21. Adam P Levine
   22. Daniel P Gale

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Prior work has linked posterior urethral valves (PUV), a common cause of end stage renal disease in children, with chromosomal abnormalities and rare copy number variants, but the genetic causes of PUV remain incompletely defined. In this study, the authors have used diverse ancestry whole-genome sequencing association studies to identify two novel genes and an enrichment of rare duplications and inversions affecting candidate cis-regulatory elements as possible causes of this rare condition, illustrating the potential for this approach to other rare conditions.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Automatically tracking feeding behavior in populations of foraging C. elegans

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elsa Bonnard
   2. Jun Liu
   3. Nicolina Zjacic
   4. Luis Alvarez
   5. Monika Scholz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript reports a new method for high-throughput analysis of C. elegans feeding behaviour that overcomes shortcomings of existing methods. It is a useful technique that will be interesting for scientists studying feeding dynamics in worms.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Wolbachia action in the sperm produces developmentally deferred chromosome segregation defects during the Drosophila mid-blastula transition

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Brandt Warecki
   2. Simon William Abraham Titen
   3. Mohammad Shahriyar Alam
   4. Giovanni Vega
   5. Nassim Lemseffer
   6. Karen Hug
   7. Jonathan S Minden
   8. William Sullivan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript describes cellular and developmental defects at late embryonic stages during Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), which occurs when male insects harboring the endosymbiont bacteria Wolbachia fertilize eggs of uninfected females, triggering embryonic lethality, usually at the first nuclear division. This work presents evidence that the mechanism of late embryonic defects is independent from the ones responsible for early embryonic defects. The experiments are technically superb, and the strength of evidence provided is compelling, including beautiful single-embryo PCR analyses and convincing light microscopy. While the overall significance might be limited, the knowledge will be useful to those in the fields of cytoplasmic incompatibilities and insect embryo development.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)”

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Postsynaptic burst reactivation of hippocampal neurons enables associative plasticity of temporally discontiguous inputs

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Tanja Fuchsberger
   2. Claudia Clopath
   3. Przemyslaw Jarzebowski
   4. Zuzanna Brzosko
   5. Hongbing Wang
   6. Ole Paulsen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript, contains fundamental findings that substantially advance understanding of an important research question, mostly uses appropriate and validated methodology in line with the current state-of-the-art, with good support for the claims, and the message of the manuscript will have a profound and lasting influence on neuroscience. In essence, the manuscript reports that dopamine converts spike-timing-dependent synaptic depression into potentiation that requires cAMP/PKA second messenger cascade and protein synthesis. The mechanism enables a separate synaptic input to induce heterosynaptic potentiation in previously primed synapses, which is shown in a network model to have desirable computational properties. The significance of the findings is threefold: First, it is the longest-lasting synaptic eligibility trace identified so far; second, the mechanism enables memory linking between temporally separate events; and third, it indicates a novel function of postsynaptic reactivation events. In addition, the finding may inspire new reinforcement learning algorithms in machine learning.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The centrosomal protein 83 (CEP83) regulates human pluripotent stem cell differentiation toward the kidney lineage

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Fatma Mansour
   2. Christian Hinze
   3. Narasimha Swamy Telugu
   4. Jelena Kresoja
   5. Iman B Shaheed
   6. Christian Mosimann
   7. Sebastian Diecke
   8. Kai M Schmidt-Ott

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This work will be of interest to the field of researchers that generate human stem cell-derived kidney organoids to model genetic kidney diseases. It describes a novel and crucial role of the protein CEP83 in mesoderm patterning, which further determines whether kidney tissues can form correctly. Using cutting-edge technologies the authors provide strong data, which support the key claims of this manuscript. This work is of high impact due to the relevance of CEP83 mutations in human kidney disease.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Monoallelic CRMP1 gene variants cause neurodevelopmental disorder

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Ethiraj Ravindran
   2. Nobuto Arashiki
   3. Lena-Luise Becker
   4. Kohtaro Takizawa
   5. Jonathan Lévy
   6. Thomas Rambaud
   7. Konstantin L Makridis
   8. Yoshio Goshima
   9. Na Li
   10. Maaike Vreeburg
   11. Bénédicte Demeer
   12. Achim Dickmanns
   13. Alexander PA Stegmann
   14. Hao Hu
   15. Fumio Nakamura
   16. Angela M Kaindl

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript describes de novo dominant toxic mutations in CRMP1 in 3 probands with a shared neurodevelopmental phenotype. The authors show that the mutations lead to reduced protein production from recombinant expression and that the mutations correlate with shorter neurites in cultured cells. This is the first report of mutations in CRMP1 in humans, encoding a cytoskeletal regulator protein. The results could have implications for physicians, geneticists, neurodevelopmental scientists, and cell biologists.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Unbiased proteomic and forward genetic screens reveal that mechanosensitive ion channel MSL10 functions at ER–plasma membrane contact sites in Arabidopsis thaliana

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jennette M Codjoe
   2. Ryan A Richardson
   3. Fionn McLoughlin
   4. Richard David Vierstra
   5. Elizabeth S Haswell

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The study is of interest to researchers in the field of cell biology, especially mechanosensing. The work identifies a new context to evaluate the activity of MSL proteins in mechanosensing by identifying two novel suppressors of MSL10 as components of the ER-PM contact sites (EPCS). The work has significance for both the plant and the animal science community providing the basics for various avenues of further research in the area of mechanobiology.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

9. An essential periplasmic protein coordinates lipid trafficking and is required for asymmetric polar growth in mycobacteria

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Kuldeepkumar R Gupta
   2. Celena M Gwin
   3. Kathryn C Rahlwes
   4. Kyle J Biegas
   5. Chunyan Wang
   6. Jin Ho Park
   7. Jun Liu
   8. Benjamin M Swarts
   9. Yasu S Morita
   10. E Hesper Rego

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript tackles the important question of what proteins regulate asymmetrical cell division in Mycobacteria. This will be of interest to all individuals interested in bacterial physiology. The data are sound, but some of the conclusions need to be tempered or bolstered, in relation to the models proposed.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

10. GCN2 eIF2 kinase promotes prostate cancer by maintaining amino acid homeostasis

    This article has 17 authors:

    1. Ricardo A Cordova
    2. Jagannath Misra
    3. Parth H Amin
    4. Anglea J Klunk
    5. Nur P Damayanti
    6. Kenneth R Carlson
    7. Andrew J Elmendorf
    8. Hyeong-Geug Kim
    9. Emily T Mirek
    10. Bennet D Elzey
    11. Marcus J Miller
    12. X Charlie Dong
    13. Liang Cheng
    14. Tracy G Anthony
    15. Roberto Pili
    16. Ronald C Wek
    17. Kirk A Staschke

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This manuscript is an important body of work that addresses the role of the integrated stress response (ISR) and the role of the GCN2 protein kinase in prostate cancer. The studies comprehensively elucidate how GCN2 and amino acid transporters and uptake promote prostate cancer proliferation, as well as the therapeutic potential of inhibiting this pathway. This work, therefore, provides insights for both identification of new mechanisms and experimental therapeutics in prostate cancer.

      (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

    Reviewed by eLife