eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Testing the ion-current model for flagellar length sensing and IFT regulation

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Hiroaki Ishikawa
   2. Jeremy Moore
   3. Dennis R Diener
   4. Markus Delling
   5. Wallace F Marshall

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper is valuable and of interest to scientists studying primary cilia/flagellar formation and regulation. It addresses how ciliary/flagellar length is controlled and whether calcium negatively regulates Intraflagellar transport (IFT) injection. The study convincingly demonstrates that calcium influx correlates with flagellar length, but calcium does not appear to work as a negative regulator of IFT injection, which challenges a previous model. The models and methods are generally sound, but some conclusions would be strengthened by additional experimental support.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. In-line swimming dynamics revealed by fish interacting with a robotic mechanism

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Robin Thandiackal
   2. George Lauder

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Why do fish school together? Energetic benefits have long been considered a key factor in motivating fish to swim together and tune their tail beat to exploit the whirling wake generated by conspecifics. This study clearly demonstrates that fish benefit from swimming in a two-dimensional vortical wake by locating their body in the vortical low-pressure zones that passively impart a net thrust force on their oscillating bodies. The behavioral and biofluid mechanical findings will interest comparative biomechanists, movement ecologists, evolutionary biologists, fluid mechanists, and bioinspired roboticists.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Cryo-EM structures of mitochondrial respiratory complex I from Drosophila melanogaster

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Ahmed-Noor A Agip
   2. Injae Chung
   3. Alvaro Sanchez-Martinez
   4. Alexander J Whitworth
   5. Judy Hirst

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study advances our understanding of respiratory complex I. The authors present convincing structural data for the enzyme from Drosophila melanogaster although the interpretation of conformational states is still not conclusively settled. This work will be of interest to researchers studying respiratory enzymes, the evolution of respiration, and mitochondrial diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Single-cell transcriptome profiles of Drosophila fruitless-expressing neurons from both sexes

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Colleen M Palmateer
   2. Catherina Artikis
   3. Savannah G Brovero
   4. Benjamin Friedman
   5. Alexis Gresham
   6. Michelle N Arbeitman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript will be of interest to both developmental biologists and neuroscientists. The data suggest that most (but not all) neuronal types are present in both Drosophila sexes, and the existence of mostly shared scSeq clusters suggests that sex-specific versions of the transcription factor Fruitless can modify neural function in a sex-specific way without completely altering core neural identity. This cell type gene expression atlas should prove valuable in future efforts to understand mechanisms of sex-specific development, as well as the molecular and developmental-genetic basis of sex differences in behaviour.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Structure-based prediction of T cell receptor:peptide-MHC interactions

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Philip Bradley

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The author customises an alpha-fold multimer neural network to predict TCR-pMHC and applies this to the problem of identifying peptides from a limited library, that might engage TCR with a known sequence from a limited list of potential peptides. This is an important structural problem and a useful step that can be further improved through better metrics, comparison to existing approaches, and consideration of the sensitivity of the recognition processes to small changes in structure.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Nucleotide binding is the critical regulator of ABCG2 conformational transitions

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Zsuzsanna Gyöngy
   2. Gábor Mocsár
   3. Éva Hegedűs
   4. Thomas Stockner
   5. Zsuzsanna Ritter
   6. László Homolya
   7. Anita Schamberger
   8. Tamás I Orbán
   9. Judit Remenyik
   10. Gergely Szakacs
   11. Katalin Goda

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The ABC transporter ABCG2 extrudes chemotherapy reagents and other xenobiotics from a number of different tissues. How ABCG2 operates at the molecular level has been largely derived from structures and dynamics carried out in non-physiological environments. The paper presents convincing cell-based evidence describing the relationship between structural changes of ABCG2 and substrate binding using flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and fluorescence-correlation spectroscopy methods. Both the mechanistic conclusions and methodology employed offer important insights, which will be of general interest to the biochemistry and transport biology communities.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. The cellular architecture of memory modules in Drosophila supports stochastic input integration

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Omar A Hafez
   2. Benjamin Escribano
   3. Rouven L Ziegler
   4. Jan J Hirtz
   5. Ernst Niebur
   6. Jan Pielage

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Detailed electron-microscopy reconstructions of neurons, which are now available for a complete Drosophila central brain, raise the prospect of detailed models of their electrical properties. This manuscript uses a recently released dataset to model one particular neuron in an olfactory learning center of the fly brain. The model elucidates how this neuron responds to synaptic inputs that represent odor, suggesting how modification of these synapses might underlie olfactory memory. This work brings together electrophysiological recordings and neuroanatomical reconstructions from volume electron microscopy to model how a neuronal arbor integrates synaptic inputs. With the many ongoing connectome mapping projects world wide, the results here can illustrate an approach to interpretation of connectomes towards understanding neural circuit function. The rules of synaptic plasticity discussed here furthermore do not only shed light into the mechanisms of learning and memory in biological systems but also inspire the formulation of new approaches to adjusting connection weights in artificial neural networks.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. International multicenter study comparing COVID-19 in patients with cancer to patients without cancer: Impact of risk factors and treatment modalities on survivorship

   This article has 52 authors:

   1. Issam I Raad
   2. Ray Hachem
   3. Nigo Masayuki
   4. Tarcila Datoguia
   5. Hiba Dagher
   6. Ying Jiang
   7. Vivek Subbiah
   8. Bilal Siddiqui
   9. Arnaud Bayle
   10. Robert Somer
   11. Ana Fernández Cruz
   12. Edward Gorak
   13. Arvinder Bhinder
   14. Nobuyoshi Mori
   15. Nelson Hamerschlak
   16. Samuel Shelanski
   17. Tomislav Dragovich
   18. Yee Elise Vong Kiat
   19. Suha Fakhreddine
   20. Abi Hanna Pierre
   21. Roy F Chemaly
   22. Victor Mulanovich
   23. Javier Adachi
   24. Jovan Borjan
   25. Fareed Khawaja
   26. Bruno Granwehr
   27. Teny John
   28. Eduardo Yepez Yepez
   29. Harrys A Torres
   30. Natraj Reddy Ammakkanavar
   31. Marcel Yibirin
   32. Cielito C Reyes-Gibby
   33. Mala Pande
   34. Noman Ali
   35. Raniv Dawey Rojo
   36. Shahnoor M Ali
   37. Rita E Deeba
   38. Patrick Chaftari
   39. Takahiro Matsuo
   40. Kazuhiro Ishikawa
   41. Ryo Hasegawa
   42. Ramón Aguado-Noya
   43. Alvaro Garcia García
   44. Cristina Traseira Puchol
   45. Dong Gun Lee
   46. Monica Slavin
   47. Benjamin Teh
   48. Cesar A Arias
   49. Data-Driven Determinants for COVID-19 Oncology Discovery Effort (D3CODE) Team
   50. Dimitrios P Kontoyiannis
   51. Alexandre E Malek
   52. Anne-Marie Chaftari

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study has looked at the 30-day mortality risk from COVID-19 in a large population of unvaccinated patients with and without cancer. Age and cancer were independent risk factors for death. In particular haematological malignancies and lung cancer presented the highest risk. These data add to the body of evidence regarding the risk of COVID-19 in patients with cancer. This manuscript is of broad interest to oncologists, internists, and infectious disease specialists in managing patients with COVID-19 and cancer.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Procalcitonin for antimicrobial stewardship among cancer patients admitted with COVID-19

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Hiba Dagher
   2. Anne-Marie Chaftari
   3. Patricia Mulanovich
   4. Ying Jiang
   5. Ray Hachem
   6. Alexandre E Malek
   7. Jovan Borjan
   8. George M Viola
   9. Issam Raad

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     One must appreciate the challenges of antimicrobial stewardship in an immunocompromised population. This retrospective single-institution study provides support for the working hypothesis that initial procalcitonin levels might be used in cancer patients admitted with COVID-19 infection to omit, reduce, or de-escalate the need for empiric antimicrobial therapy. In the setting of a global pandemic, this is a common issue with COVID-19 patients in generally, but far more difficult in a cancer patient population. The results presented here support the authors' conclusions, however, future subgroup analysis of more specific scenarios among cancer patients with COVID-19 (e.g., neutropenia, active chemotherapy, and need for intensive care) are warranted.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Differential processing of decision information in subregions of rodent medial prefrontal cortex

    This article has 2 authors:

    1. Geoffrey W Diehl
    2. A David Redish

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      In this study, Diehl and Redish present a novel account of functional variability in the rodent medial prefrontal cortex. The authors report that, in general, the dorsal regions encode decision-related variables, whereas the ventral regions encode variables more linked to motivation, such as trial number in the session and amount of lingering time. Overall, the study is interesting, the experimental design is excellent, and the uniquely large neural data set is a strength. The suggestion of functional subdivisions in the prelimbic area is particularly provocative, and this conclusion, along with the data supporting it, will be of broad interest to those who study the anatomy and function of the rodent medial prefrontal cortex.

    Reviewed by eLife