eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. High-throughput library transgenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans via Transgenic Arrays Resulting in Diversity of Integrated Sequences (TARDIS)

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Zachary C Stevenson
   2. Megan J Moerdyk-Schauwecker
   3. Stephen A Banse
   4. Dhaval S Patel
   5. Hang Lu
   6. Patrick C Phillips

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript provides a description of an approach for efficiently integrating diverse libraries into the C. elegans genome and tools that enable researchers to use the method. It is a valuable contribution for researchers carrying out experiments that would benefit from easy generation of such libraries, and the data for the effectiveness of the method is solid. The advantages of this approach in terms of ease and effectiveness relative to others with similar aims will emerge as they are put to more general use in addressing biological problems.

   Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

2. Biological brain age prediction using machine learning on structural neuroimaging data: Multi-cohort validation against biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration stratified by sex

   This article has 31 authors:

   1. Irene Cumplido-Mayoral
   2. Marina García-Prat
   3. Grégory Operto
   4. Carles Falcon
   5. Mahnaz Shekari
   6. Raffaele Cacciaglia
   7. Marta Milà-Alomà
   8. Luigi Lorenzini
   9. Silvia Ingala
   10. Alle Meije Wink
   11. Henk JMM Mutsaerts
   12. Carolina Minguillón
   13. Karine Fauria
   14. José Luis Molinuevo
   15. Sven Haller
   16. Gael Chetelat
   17. Adam Waldman
   18. Adam J Schwarz
   19. Frederik Barkhof
   20. Ivonne Suridjan
   21. Gwendlyn Kollmorgen
   22. Anna Bayfield
   23. Henrik Zetterberg
   24. Kaj Blennow
   25. Marc Suárez-Calvet
   26. Verónica Vilaplana
   27. Juan Domingo Gispert
   28. ALFA study
   29. EPAD study
   30. ADNI study
   31. OASIS study

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The study has some significance for the field of dementia research and neurodegenerative diseases more broadly. Using the brain-age paradigm, the main findings are that having an older-appearing brain is associated with more advanced stages of amyloid and tau pathology, higher white matter hyperintensities, higher plasma NfL and carrying the APOE 34 allele. Findings were broadly similar in cognitively normal people and people with mild cognitive impairment and the evidence for these findings is convincing. Although sex differences are emphasized, the evidence for this is generally incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Spatiotemporal tissue maturation of thalamocortical pathways in the human fetal brain

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Siân Wilson
   2. Maximilian Pietsch
   3. Lucilio Cordero-Grande
   4. Daan Christiaens
   5. Alena Uus
   6. Vyacheslav R Karolis
   7. Vanessa Kyriakopoulou
   8. Kathleen Colford
   9. Anthony N Price
   10. Jana Hutter
   11. Mary A Rutherford
   12. Emer J Hughes
   13. Serena J Counsell
   14. Jacques-Donald Tournier
   15. Joseph V Hajnal
   16. A David Edwards
   17. Jonathan O’Muircheartaigh
   18. Tomoki Arichi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents important new findings regarding prenatal thalamocortical development. The authors present convincing evidence to overcome substantial methodological challenges in charting prenatal brain development in vivo. This work will be of interest to pediatric and developmental neuroscientists and neuroradiologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Metabolic clogging of mannose triggers dNTP loss and genomic instability in human cancer cells

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Yoichiro Harada
   2. Yu Mizote
   3. Takehiro Suzuki
   4. Akiyoshi Hirayama
   5. Satsuki Ikeda
   6. Mikako Nishida
   7. Toru Hiratsuka
   8. Ayaka Ueda
   9. Yusuke Imagawa
   10. Kento Maeda
   11. Yuki Ohkawa
   12. Junko Murai
   13. Hudson H Freeze
   14. Eiji Miyoshi
   15. Shigeki Higashiyama
   16. Heiichiro Udono
   17. Naoshi Dohmae
   18. Hideaki Tahara
   19. Naoyuki Taniguchi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors present valuable findings regarding the mechanism of high mannose induced cellular toxicity in cancer cells. The evidence supporting genomic instability as the anti-cancer activity of mannose is convincing with multiple orthogonal approaches showing consistent results, but the conclusions related to metabolic remodeling could be further strengthened by additional metabolomics data. While the findings are limited to genetically modified cancer cell lines cultured in vitro, this work will be of interest to cell biologists working on cancer metabolism.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The effect of weight loss following 18 months of lifestyle intervention on brain age assessed with resting-state functional connectivity

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Gidon Levakov
   2. Alon Kaplan
   3. Anat Yaskolka Meir
   4. Ehud Rinott
   5. Gal Tsaban
   6. Hila Zelicha
   7. Matthias Blüher
   8. Uta Ceglarek
   9. Michael Stumvoll
   10. Ilan Shelef
   11. Galia Avidan
   12. Iris Shai

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This potentially important study examines brain age based on resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) following an 18-month lifestyle intervention. The design of the intervention study is generally solid; the randomized controlled trial includes three intervention groups and assessments at two-time points of numerous health markers, however, the methodology for brain age prediction appears somewhat incomplete and would benefit from more rigorous approaches. The lack of control groups also prevents firm conclusions about the extent to which the observed RSFC changes are linked to the intervention. With these parts strengthened, the paper would be of broad interest to neuroscientists and biologists working on obesity, lifestyle interventions, and brain health.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Neuroelectrophysiology-compatible electrolytic lesioning

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Iliana E Bray
   2. Stephen E Clarke
   3. Kerriann M Casey
   4. Paul Nuyujukian
   5. for the Brain Interfacing Laboratory

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper reports a valuable new method for creating localized damage to candidate brain regions for functional and behavioral studies. The authors present solid support for their ability to create long-term local lesions with mm spatial resolution. The paper is likely to be of broad interest to brain researchers working to establish causal links between neural circuits and behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Endotaxis: A neuromorphic algorithm for mapping, goal-learning, navigation, and patrolling

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Tony Zhang
   2. Matthew Rosenberg
   3. Zeyu Jing
   4. Pietro Perona
   5. Markus Meister

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable work proposes a framework inspired by chemotaxis for understanding how the brain might implement behaviours related to navigating toward a goal. The evidence supporting the conceptual claim is convincing. The manuscript proposes a hypothesis that would be of interest to the broad systems neuroscience community, although it was noted the relationship to existing similar hypotheses could be clarified.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Expanding the stdpopsim species catalog, and lessons learned for realistic genome simulations

   This article has 42 authors:

   1. M Elise Lauterbur
   2. Maria Izabel A Cavassim
   3. Ariella L Gladstein
   4. Graham Gower
   5. Nathaniel S Pope
   6. Georgia Tsambos
   7. Jeffrey Adrion
   8. Saurabh Belsare
   9. Arjun Biddanda
   10. Victoria Caudill
   11. Jean Cury
   12. Ignacio Echevarria
   13. Benjamin C Haller
   14. Ahmed R Hasan
   15. Xin Huang
   16. Leonardo Nicola Martin Iasi
   17. Ekaterina Noskova
   18. Jana Obsteter
   19. Vitor Antonio Correa Pavinato
   20. Alice Pearson
   21. David Peede
   22. Manolo F Perez
   23. Murillo F Rodrigues
   24. Chris CR Smith
   25. Jeffrey P Spence
   26. Anastasia Teterina
   27. Silas Tittes
   28. Per Unneberg
   29. Juan Manuel Vazquez
   30. Ryan K Waples
   31. Anthony Wilder Wohns
   32. Yan Wong
   33. Franz Baumdicker
   34. Reed A Cartwright
   35. Gregor Gorjanc
   36. Ryan N Gutenkunst
   37. Jerome Kelleher
   38. Andrew D Kern
   39. Aaron P Ragsdale
   40. Peter L Ralph
   41. Daniel R Schrider
   42. Ilan Gronau

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important paper reports recent improvements and extensions to stdpopsim, a community-driven resource that is built on top of powerful software for performing simulations of population genomic data and provides a catalog of species with curated genomic parameters and demographic models. In addition to describing the new features and species in stdpopsim, the authors provide a set of practical guidelines for implementing realistic simulations. Overall, this convincing manuscript serves as an excellent overview of the utility, challenges, common pitfalls, and best practices of population genomic simulations. It will be of broad interest to population, evolutionary, and ecological geneticists studying humans, model organisms, or non-model organisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Structural foundation for the role of enterococcal PrgB in conjugation, biofilm formation, and virulence

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Wei-Sheng Sun
   2. Lena Lassinantti
   3. Michael Järvå
   4. Andreas Schmitt
   5. Josy ter Beek
   6. Ronnie P-A Berntsson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents valuable structural data for the bacterial adhesin PrgB, an atypical microbial cell surface-anchored polypeptide that binds DNA. There is convincing support for the claims regarding the overall function and importance of individual domains, which integrate a wide range of new and previously published experimental data. The structure-based model of PrgB molecular activity will be impactful in the field of bacterial adhesins, conjugation, and biofilm formation, especially because it focuses on a clinically relevant Gram-positive pathogen, whereas most work in the field has been focused on Gram-negative model systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Inhibition of type I PRMTs reforms muscle stem cell identity enhancing their therapeutic capacity

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Claudia Dominici
    2. Oscar D Villarreal
    3. Junio Dort
    4. Emilie Heckel
    5. Yu Chang Wang
    6. Ioannis Ragoussis
    7. Jean-Sebastien Joyal
    8. Nicolas Dumont
    9. Stéphane Richard

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This valuable paper informs on the role of type I PRMTs in programming muscle stem cell identification. The evidence presented is mostly solid, with some weaknesses in the evidence regarding the proposed mechanism. The paper will be of particular interest to those who study skeletal muscle satellite cell biology.

    Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science