eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Pynapple, a toolbox for data analysis in neuroscience

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Guillaume Viejo
   2. Daniel Levenstein
   3. Sofia Skromne Carrasco
   4. Dhruv Mehrotra
   5. Sara Mahallati
   6. Gilberto R Vite
   7. Henry Denny
   8. Lucas Sjulson
   9. Francesco P Battaglia
   10. Adrien Peyrache

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper introduces the python software package Pynapple and a separate package of more advanced routines (Pynacollada) to the Neuroscience/Neural Engineering community. Pynapple provides a set of data objects and methods that have the potential to simplify data analysis for neural and behavioral data types. This represents a valuable contribution to the field. With more examples and as a live coding notebook, the evidence was judged to be compelling.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Sex, strain, and lateral differences in brain cytoarchitecture across a large mouse population

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. David Elkind
   2. Hannah Hochgerner
   3. Etay Aloni
   4. Noam Shental
   5. Amit Zeisel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors provide a new powerful tool as well as a large database that should be useful to the neuroscience community, but not only. The authors developed and applied a methodology to automatically estimate the volume, cell number, and density of mice brains from multiple regions, by detecting the native fluorescence of the cell nuclei. Using this platform, they analyzed an existing dataset containing multiple mouse brains, available in the Allen Mouse Connectivity project. The data provides a comprehensive neuroanatomical comparison of brain nuclei between males and females, between hemispheres, and between 2 strains of lab mice.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Using adversarial networks to extend brain computer interface decoding accuracy over time

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Xuan Ma
   2. Fabio Rizzoglio
   3. Kevin L Bodkin
   4. Eric Perreault
   5. Lee E Miller
   6. Ann Kennedy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In its current form, the reviewers felt that the work describing the use of a CycleGAN for alignment of neural activity from a neural interface across sessions was useful, with solid evidence showing that it improved performance over similar-concept previous approaches.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Focal adhesion protein vinculin inhibits Mef2c-driven sclerostin expression in osteocytes to promote bone formation in mice

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yishu Wang
   2. Jianmei Huang
   3. Sixiong Lin
   4. Lei Qin
   5. Dingyu Hao
   6. Peijun Zhang
   7. Shaochuan Huo
   8. Xuenong Zou
   9. Di Chen
   10. Guozhi Xiao

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an interesting and valuable study describing the importance of a focal adhesion protein vinculin in osteocytes in controlling bone formation by regulating the expression of sclerostin, which inhibits bone formation. The data are generally convincing and support the conclusions. Some additional investigation and discussions are required to further strengthen the conclusion and interpretation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Analogue signaling of somatodendritic synaptic activity to axon enhances GABA release in young cerebellar molecular layer interneurons

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Federico Trigo
   2. Shin-ya Kawaguchi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Small subthreshold dendritic-somatic depolarizations can propagate to presynaptic nerve endings and may modulate transmitter release, but the mechanisms of this modulation remain poorly understood because the technical challenge of recording from small bouton synapse. Here the authors directly record from small cerebellar bouton terminals In paired somatic and presynaptic recordings, they demonstrate that small synaptic potentials can travel within 2 to 3 ms to the bouton and arrive there with an amplitude attenuated by 20 to 70% with respect to the somatically recorded potential. As expected, this amplitude attenuation depends on axon length. In recordings of MLI-Purkinje cell pairs the authors further demonstrate that small somatic subthreshold depolarizations of about 20 mV size can enhance AP-triggered IPSCs recorded in the Purkinje cells and change synaptic plasticity during AP trains. In order to address mechanisms of such presynaptic modulation, the authors measure presynaptic AP waveforms via cell attached recordings and found these very stable. On the other hand, presynaptic ICa(V) directly recorded in voltage-clamped MLI boutons facilitated in response to small pre-depolarizations and such facilitated ICa(V) produced larger IPSCs in paired recordings of MLI boutons and coupled Purkinje cells. The authors propose that an accumulation of partially gated channels during small presynaptic depolarizations is able to produce more rapid gating of VGCCs during the AP waveform on arrival of an invading presynaptic AP.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Neural mechanisms of parasite-induced summiting behavior in ‘zombie’ Drosophila

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Carolyn Elya
   2. Danylo Lavrentovich
   3. Emily Lee
   4. Cassandra Pasadyn
   5. Jasper Duval
   6. Maya Basak
   7. Valerie Saykina
   8. Benjamin de Bivort

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The phenomenon of summit disease, where complex animal behaviours are controlled by single-celled parasites, captivates biologists and non-scientists alike. In this valuable study, the authors use a laboratory model (Drosophila melanogaster infected with Entomophthora muscae) for this disease to provide compelling evidence for the neuroanatomical and physiological underpinnings of summit disease. This is an excellent example of how seemingly intractable questions in behavioural ecology can be effectively addressed in laboratory settings using decades of work in creating 'models' for biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Cannabidiol sensitizes TRPV2 channels to activation by 2-APB

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Aaron Gochman
   2. Xiao-Feng Tan
   3. Chanhyung Bae
   4. Helen Chen
   5. Kenton J Swartz
   6. Andres Jara-Oseguera

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important report on the discovery of a strong sensitizing effect of cannabidiol on the activation of TRPV2 channels by 2-APB. The conclusions are convincingly supported by solid electrophysiological recordings and cryo-EM structures, but identification of a clear molecular mechanism will require additional structural work. The paper will be of interest to the ion channel research community.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Prolonged T-cell activation and long COVID symptoms independently associate with severe COVID-19 at 3 months

   This article has 25 authors:

   1. Marianna Santopaolo
   2. Michaela Gregorova
   3. Fergus Hamilton
   4. David Arnold
   5. Anna Long
   6. Aurora Lacey
   7. Elizabeth Oliver
   8. Alice Halliday
   9. Holly Baum
   10. Kristy Hamilton
   11. Rachel Milligan
   12. Olivia Pearce
   13. Lea Knezevic
   14. Begonia Morales Aza
   15. Alice Milne
   16. Emily Milodowski
   17. Eben Jones
   18. Rajeka Lazarus
   19. Anu Goenka
   20. Adam Finn
   21. Nicholas Maskell
   22. Andrew D Davidson
   23. Kathleen Gillespie
   24. Linda Wooldridge
   25. Laura Rivino

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable paper uses a cohort of SARS-CoV-2 infected people to link immune signatures 3 months post-infection with persistent, long COVID-19 symptoms. The strength of the evidence presented is solid based on a wide array of immunologic assays and a strategically designed cohort, with some claims that are incomplete based on a lack of specifically designed endpoints, lack of analysis of regulatory signals, and incomplete use of control samples. A couple of findings are novel and will be of interest to clinicians and immunologists, particularly that degree of inflammation at 3 months does not impair the generation of SARS-CoV-2 humoral and cellular memory responses and that cellular immune signatures are only somewhat correlated with long COVID-19 symptoms.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Unraveling the influences of sequence and position on yeast uORF activity using massively parallel reporter systems and machine learning

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Gemma E May
   2. Christina Akirtava
   3. Matthew Agar-Johnson
   4. Jelena Micic
   5. John Woolford
   6. Joel McManus

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Protein abundance is the result of many layers of regulation, including at the levels of transcription, mRNA stability, translation and protein degradation. Many transcripts contain short upstream ORFs (uORFS), but their effects on the translation of the main ORFs are difficult to predict as they are sometimes negative, positive and of different magnitudes. Here, the authors identify features of uORFs using massively parallel reporter assays, and these features help predict uORF effects on translation of main ORFs. The results will be an important resource for the community of researchers using this model organism and for the molecular and cell biology community in general as they allow to better understand how genes are regulated. There are also areas in which the authors' claims or conclusions are not fully justified and require either additional statistical analysis or new experimentation.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. CTLA-4 antibody-drug conjugate reveals autologous destruction of B-lymphocytes associated with regulatory T cell impairment

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Musleh M Muthana
    2. Xuexiang Du
    3. Mingyue Liu
    4. Xu Wang
    5. Wei Wu
    6. Chunxia Ai
    7. Lishan Su
    8. Pan Zheng
    9. Yang Liu

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This valuable study presents presents solid evidence that an anti-CTLA-4 antibody drug conjugate transiently depletes circulating B cells in a mouse model, showing how dysregulation of the T cell immune system can impact B cell homeostasis. The work will be of broad interest to immunologists and medical biologists, but a major limitation is that the mechanism of B-cell reduction remains unclear, as evidence of killing of B-cells by T-cells is not presented.

    Reviewed by eLife