eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Regulatory T cells suppress the formation of potent KLRK1 and IL-7R expressing effector CD8 T cells by limiting IL-2

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Oksana Tsyklauri
   2. Tereza Chadimova
   3. Veronika Niederlova
   4. Jirina Kovarova
   5. Juraj Michalik
   6. Iva Malatova
   7. Sarka Janusova
   8. Olha Ivashchenko
   9. Helene Rossez
   10. Ales Drobek
   11. Hana Vecerova
   12. Virginie Galati
   13. Marek Kovar
   14. Ondrej Stepanek

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript is of primary interest to immunologists with a focus on the effects of interleukin-2 and T cell receptor (TCR) signaling on effector T cell differentiation and function. Extensive and well-controlled experiments support a model where TCR and interleukin-2 signals promote a specific subset of effector CD8+ T cells - termed KILR cells - with superior target cell killing properties.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Optimization of energy and time predicts dynamic speeds for human walking

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Rebecca Elizabeth Carlisle
   2. Arthur D Kuo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study presents a new optimal control cost framework to predict features of walking bouts, adding a cost function term proportional to the duration of the walking bout in addition to the conventional energetic term. While predicted optimal trajectories from simulations qualitatively matched walking data from human subjects, the evidence supporting these claims is incomplete, as some methodological choices raise questions about the strength of the authors' claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Adaptation dynamics between copy-number and point mutations

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Isabella Tomanek
   2. Călin C Guet

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important paper that proposes a novel evolutionary mechanism by which copy-number mutations can slow down the accumulation of point mutations in populations evolving in certain environments. The authors use an evolution experiment in bacteria equipped with a clever reporter system to provide solid evidence that this mechanism indeed operates. This paper will be of broad interest to readers in evolutionary biology and related fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Human Dectin-1 is O-glycosylated and serves as a ligand for C-type lectin receptor CLEC-2

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Shojiro Haji
   2. Taiki Ito
   3. Carla Guenther
   4. Miyako Nakano
   5. Takashi Shimizu
   6. Daiki Mori
   7. Yasunori Chiba
   8. Masato Tanaka
   9. Sushil K Mishra
   10. Janet A Willment
   11. Gordon D Brown
   12. Masamichi Nagae
   13. Sho Yamasaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The C-type lectin receptor family recognise pathogens and self-components. Dectin-1 is known to recognize glucan on pathogens. In this fundamental study Dectin-1 and CLEC-2 another - C-type lectin receptor, expressed on platelets - interact through an O-glycosylated ligand presented in the stalk region of Dectin-1. This compelling study demonstrates a potential role for pattern recognition receptors in physiological processes.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Lior Baltiansky
   2. Guy Frankel
   3. Ofer Feinerman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study is of relevance to the field of collective animal behavior. The proposed crop-cue-based motion-switching rules provide a welcome alternative to other models that assume far more deliberative abilities of ants, and it will be valuable to add this example to the collective motion and collective decision-making literature. There were several major issues that need addressing, including: overly simplistic models, no connection to similar phenomena in motion ecology and statistical mechanics, potential deficiences in the stochastic modeling approach, as well as some confusing terms and curious citations of the literature.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. How human runners regulate footsteps on uneven terrain

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Nihav Dhawale
   2. Madhusudhan Venkadesan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper presents findings from a novel experimental study of the dynamics of human overground running on naturalistically uneven terrain. The terrain used in the experiments has mildly stochastic undulating roughness, a condition that closely resembles many natural terrain conditions, such as trail running. The authors present evidence that humans use open-loop intrinsically stable strategies to run on this terrain, and do not visually guided foot placement. The findings make an important contribution toward understanding the context-dependent role of vision in navigating uneven terrain.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Emergent color categorization in a neural network trained for object recognition

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jelmer P de Vries
   2. Arash Akbarinia
   3. Alban Flachot
   4. Karl R Gegenfurtner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper addresses the long-standing problem of color categorization and the forces that bring it about, which can be potentially interesting to researchers in cognition, visual neuroscience, society, and culture. In particular, the authors show that as a "model organism", a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained with the human-labelled image dataset ImageNet for object recognition can represent color categories. The finding reveals important features of deep neural networks in color processing and can also guide future theoretical and empirical work in high-level color vision.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Antibody levels following vaccination against SARS-CoV-2: associations with post-vaccination infection and risk factors in two UK longitudinal studies

   This article has 37 authors:

   1. Nathan J Cheetham
   2. Milla Kibble
   3. Andrew Wong
   4. Richard J Silverwood
   5. Anika Knuppel
   6. Dylan M Williams
   7. Olivia KL Hamilton
   8. Paul H Lee
   9. Charis Bridger Staatz
   10. Giorgio Di Gessa
   11. Jingmin Zhu
   12. Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi
   13. George B Ploubidis
   14. Ellen J Thompson
   15. Ruth CE Bowyer
   16. Xinyuan Zhang
   17. Golboo Abbasian
   18. Maria Paz Garcia
   19. Deborah Hart
   20. Jeffrey Seow
   21. Carl Graham
   22. Neophytos Kouphou
   23. Sam Acors
   24. Michael H Malim
   25. Ruth E Mitchell
   26. Kate Northstone
   27. Daniel Major-Smith
   28. Sarah Matthews
   29. Thomas Breeze
   30. Michael Crawford
   31. Lynn Molloy
   32. Alex SF Kwong
   33. Katie Doores
   34. Nishi Chaturvedi
   35. Emma L Duncan
   36. Nicholas J Timpson
   37. Claire J Steves

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors collected and analyzed blood samples from >9,000 participants from two cross-sectional cohort studies in the UK, the ALSPAC cohort and the TwinsUK cohort. They measured anti-Nucleocapsid and anti-Spike antibodies using the collected blood samples. They investigated the variation in antibody levels and risk factors for lower antibody levels following each round of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. They identify that following the third vaccination, risk factors associated with low antibody response after the first vaccination are less likely to lead to sub-protective levels. While this finding is of potential importance, the presentation of the data is diffuse and not focused at times, and more discussion is needed to highlight its relevance to the current stage of the pandemic.

   Reviewed by eLife, ScreenIT

9. Polygenic adaptation from standing genetic variation allows rapid ecotype formation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Nico Fuhrmann
   2. Celine Prakash
   3. Tobias S Kaiser

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study combines phenotypic analysis, quantitative genetics and population genomics to propose that multiple genes underlie adaptive divergence in a marine midge system linked to tidal rhythm. Genes with a plausible role in perceiving and responding to lunar information are among the loci that most highly differentiate populations with distinct behaviors, but how much of this might be due to demography remains unclear. The evidence from quantitative trait locus is also deemed incomplete at this point.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Heritability enrichment in context-specific regulatory networks improves phenotype-relevant tissue identification

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Zhanying Feng
    2. Zhana Duren
    3. Jingxue Xin
    4. Qiuyue Yuan
    5. Yaoxi He
    6. Bing Su
    7. Wing Hung Wong
    8. Yong Wang

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This manuscript is of interest to scientists studying the genetics of complex human diseases. The approach introduced here is potentially useful for the identification of tissues linked to complex disease heritability. Currently, the key claims of the paper are not entirely supported by the data. The claims may become well supported once the authors improve statistical rigor and perform a more comprehensive comparison with other methods.

    Reviewed by eLife