eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Evidence for virus-mediated oncogenesis in bladder cancers arising in solid organ transplant recipients

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Gabriel J Starrett
   2. Kelly Yu
   3. Yelena Golubeva
   4. Petra Lenz
   5. Mary L Piaskowski
   6. David Petersen
   7. Michael Dean
   8. Ajay Israni
   9. Brenda Y Hernandez
   10. Thomas C Tucker
   11. Iona Cheng
   12. Lou Gonsalves
   13. Cyllene R Morris
   14. Shehnaz K Hussain
   15. Charles F Lynch
   16. Reuben S Harris
   17. Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson
   18. Paul S Meltzer
   19. Christopher B Buck
   20. Eric A Engels

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The fundamental work by Starret et al advances the understanding of the etiological roles of viruses and other environmental factors in bladder cancers after solid organ transplantation. The evidence is compelling using cutting edge sequencing approaches of patient samples. This work will be immediately interesting to multiple fields (of viral oncogenesis, BK polyomavirus (BKPyV) and JC polyomavirus (JCPyV), solid organ transplantation and whole genome and transcriptome sequencing) and may eventually influence care after organ transplantation.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Two forms of asynchronous release with distinctive spatiotemporal dynamics in central synapses

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Gerardo Malagon
   2. Jongyun Myeong
   3. Vitaly A Klyachko

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study addresses a fundamental question about the spatiotemporal location of neurotransmitter release in a synapse with essential implications for postsynaptic signaling and neural excitability in general. The authors provide convincing evidence on non-overlapping nanometer scale organization of the two primary forms of evoked vesicle fusion (synchronous and asynchronous) in the synapse. They utilize tools for super-resolution assessment of synaptic transmission that were previously developed in their lab, in this way they help bridge earlier work based on imaging approaches that lack temporal resolution and electrophysiological results lacking spatial resolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Live imaging reveals chromatin compaction transitions and dynamic transcriptional bursting during stem cell differentiation in vivo

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Dennis May
   2. Sangwon Yun
   3. David G Gonzalez
   4. Sangbum Park
   5. Yanbo Chen
   6. Elizabeth Lathrop
   7. Biao Cai
   8. Tianchi Xin
   9. Hongyu Zhao
   10. Siyuan Wang
   11. Lauren E Gonzalez
   12. Katie Cockburn
   13. Valentina Greco

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important and valuable paper that uses H2B overexpression to quantify changes to chromatin compaction using elegant in vivo imaging approaches in the live epidermis in stem cells undergoing epidermal differentiation. The results confirm in vitro findings that changes to chromatin compaction precede cell fate commitment during epidermal stem cell differentiation. These conclusions are mostly supported by solid and convincing experimental and quantitative evidence and the recapitulation of chromatin and transcriptional phenomena in a live tissue setting using careful in vivo imaging and quantification is of value.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Joint inference of evolutionary transitions to self-fertilization and demographic history using whole-genome sequences

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Stefan Strütt
   2. Thibaut Sellinger
   3. Sylvain Glémin
   4. Aurélien Tellier
   5. Stefan Laurent

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript details the valuable development of population genetics theory that can be used to infer past changes in the selfing rate in natural populations. The inference procedure is solid, although the comparison to previous estimates can be improved, and deeper insight could be gained from further theoretical exploration. The work will be of broad interest to the field of mating systems evolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. T-REX17 is a transiently expressed non-coding RNA essential for human endoderm formation

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Alexandro Landshammer
   2. Adriano Bolondi
   3. Helene Kretzmer
   4. Christian Much
   5. René Buschow
   6. Alina Rose
   7. Hua-Jun Wu
   8. Sebastian D Mackowiak
   9. Bjoern Braendl
   10. Pay Giesselmann
   11. Rosaria Tornisiello
   12. Krishna Mohan Parsi
   13. Jack Huey
   14. Thorsten Mielke
   15. David Meierhofer
   16. René Maehr
   17. Denes Hnisz
   18. Franziska Michor
   19. John L Rinn
   20. Alexander Meissner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Based on a large set of complementary experiments, the authors propose that the lncRNA LNCSOX17 regulates human definitive endoderm differentiation, although its function is not related to the adjacent SOX17 gene in the same topological domain (TAD). The findings are important and supported by convincing data, although the molecular mechanism by which LNCSOX17 regulates endoderm differentiation stays unresolved.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Structural basis for the Rad6 activation by the Bre1 N-terminal domain

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Meng Shi
   2. Jiaqi Zhao
   3. Simin Zhang
   4. Wei Huang
   5. Mengfei Li
   6. Xue Bai
   7. Wenxue Zhang
   8. Kai Zhang
   9. Xuefeng Chen
   10. Song Xiang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental study presents a crystal structure of two proteins catalyzing histone H2B ubiquitination. Findings from the structural study are further validated by mutagenesis and functional assays. This is a well-executed study providing useful information to the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Heterosynaptic plasticity of the visuo-auditory projection requires cholecystokinin released from entorhinal cortex afferents

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Wenjian Sun
   2. Haohao Wu
   3. Yujie Peng
   4. Xuejiao Zheng
   5. Jing Li
   6. Dingxuan Zeng
   7. Peng Tang
   8. Ming Zhao
   9. Hemin Feng
   10. Hao Li
   11. Ye Liang
   12. Junfeng Su
   13. Xi Chen
   14. Tomas Hökfelt
   15. Jufang He

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important work provides knowledge regarding how neuropeptides, which are highly expressed in the brain, can influence cortical plasticity. The conclusions are supported by compelling evidence from both in vitro and in vivo assays, although some control experiments are needed to further strengthen the conclusions. This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists studying cortical processing and neural plasticity, as well as cell biologists and biochemists interested in peptide function in general.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Genetic dissection of mutual interference between two consecutive learning tasks in Drosophila

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Jianjian Zhao
   2. Xuchen Zhang
   3. Bohan Zhao
   4. Wantong Hu
   5. Tongxin Diao
   6. Liyuan Wang
   7. Yi Zhong
   8. Qian Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental study substantially advances our understanding of interactions of consecutive memory tasks by identifying responsible molecules and neurons. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is generally solid, although further contextualization of the interferences in memory consolidation and more rigorous measurements of the effects of genetic manipulation would have strengthened the study. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists working on learning and memory as well as learning psychologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. TPL2 kinase activity regulates microglial inflammatory responses and promotes neurodegeneration in tauopathy mice

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Yuanyuan Wang
   2. Tiffany Wu
   3. Ming-Chi Tsai
   4. Mitchell G Rezzonico
   5. Alyaa M Abdel-Haleem
   6. Luke Xie
   7. Vineela D Gandham
   8. Hai Ngu
   9. Kimberly Stark
   10. Caspar Glock
   11. Daqi Xu
   12. Oded Foreman
   13. Brad A Friedman
   14. Morgan Sheng
   15. Jesse E Hanson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In this study, the authors provide important findings supporting a key role for TLP2 as a regulator of neurotoxic and pro-inflammatory cytokine and chemokine release following acute and chronic neuroinflammation. They provide convincing data supporting that the abrogation of TPL2 kinase activity ameliorates disease pathogenesis in a mouse model of tauopathy. This manuscript will be of broad interest to readers in the fields of neuroimmunology and neurodegenerative disease who are interested in the pathogenic effects of innate immune signaling pathways in disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. MeCP2 regulates Gdf11, a dosage-sensitive gene critical for neurological function

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Sameer S Bajikar
    2. Ashley G Anderson
    3. Jian Zhou
    4. Mark A Durham
    5. Alexander J Trostle
    6. Ying-Wooi Wan
    7. Zhandong Liu
    8. Huda Y Zoghbi

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      Rett syndrome is one of the most frequently diagnosed neurodevelopmental conditions. The gene mutated in the condition, Mecp2, encodes for a transcriptional repressor, but genes functioning downstream of Mecp2 have remained difficult to clarify. Here the authors identify an important candidate gene, Growth Differentiation Factor 11 (GDF11) regulated by Mecp2 via epigenetic mechanisms. Further studies in mouse models demonstrate that genetic reduction of Gdf11 ameliorates behavioral deficits of Mecp2 duplication mice, and can function to produce neurobehavioral deficits in mice alone. These findings will be of interest to scientists working in mouse cognition, behavior, neurodevelopment, transcriptional and epigenetics.

    Reviewed by eLife