eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Molecular characterization of cell types in the squid Loligo vulgaris

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Jules Duruz
   2. Marta Sprecher
   3. Jenifer C Kaldun
   4. Al-Sayed Al-Soudy
   5. Heidi EL Lischer
   6. Geert van Geest
   7. Pamela Nicholson
   8. Rémy Bruggmann
   9. Simon G Sprecher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript describes cell types in the head of the squid, Loligo vulgaris, through expression patterns of key genes identified in single cell transcriptomics. This topic is generally of great comparative interest. It will contribute to a better understanding of the cephalopod nervous and sensory systems, providing a basis for future comparative and evolutionary research.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. The impact of task context on predicting finger movements in a brain-machine interface

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Matthew J Mender
   2. Samuel R Nason-Tomaszewski
   3. Hisham Temmar
   4. Joseph T Costello
   5. Dylan M Wallace
   6. Matthew S Willsey
   7. Nishant Ganesh Kumar
   8. Theodore A Kung
   9. Parag Patil
   10. Cynthia A Chestek

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides valuable findings about how brain machine interfaces cope with changes in context, an important consideration for deploying such devices in the real world. The evidence supporting the claims is solid although increasing the number and range of contexts investigated would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to motor neuroscientists and engineers developing brain machine interfaces and will be useful for future development of such devices.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Optogenetics and electron tomography for structure-function analysis of cochlear ribbon synapses

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Rituparna Chakrabarti
   2. Lina María Jaime Tobón
   3. Loujin Slitin
   4. Magdalena Redondo Canales
   5. Gerhard Hoch
   6. Marina Slashcheva
   7. Elisabeth Fritsch
   8. Kai Bodensiek
   9. Özge Demet Özçete
   10. Mehmet Gültas
   11. Susann Michanski
   12. Felipe Opazo
   13. Jakob Neef
   14. Tina Pangrsic
   15. Tobias Moser
   16. Carolin Wichmann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important and methodologically compelling paper that reports the first application of optogenetics to inner hair cell ribbon exocytosis mechanisms in the inner ear and rapid flash-and-freeze techniques to a ribbon synapse. The conclusions of the paper are mostly well supported by the data and it will capture the interests of a broad audience of neurobiologists and sensory physiologists. Paired recordings of inner hair cells and afferents validate the optogenetic protocols of stimulation. A surprising finding is the nearly complete absence of docked vesicles at rest and after stimulation, but upon stimulation vesicles rapidly associate with the ribbon. The reviewers agreed that this is a high-quality study, but that some additional work is needed to address certain pitfalls of the methods used and to rule out alternative explanations of the data.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Ultrafast (400 Hz) network oscillations induced in mouse barrel cortex by optogenetic activation of thalamocortical axons

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hang Hu
   2. Rachel E Hostetler
   3. Ariel Agmon

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript provides a successful model to study the ultrafast brain oscillation-mediated brain circuitry and cellular mechanisms in sensory processing. Utilizing this model, the authors studied potential cellular mechanisms that generate ultrafast oscillations (250-600Hz) in the cortex. These oscillations correlate with sensory stimulation and might be relevant for perceiving relevant sensory inputs. The data reasonably support most of the claims by the authors in this manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Evolutionary divergence in the conformational landscapes of tyrosine vs serine/threonine kinases

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Joan Gizzio
   2. Abhishek Thakur
   3. Allan Haldane
   4. Ronald M Levy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important paper provides a convincing mechanism for relative binding specificity of Type II inhibitors to kinases. The combination of a sequence-derived Potts-model with experimental dissociation constants and calculated free energies of binding to the DFG-out state is highly compelling and goes beyond the current state of the art. Given the importance of kinases in pathophysiological processes, the results will be of interest to a broad audience and, in addition, the combination of computational methods can be applicable to a wide variety of other biophysical processes that involve conformational rearrangements.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Cholecystokinin-expressing (CCK+) basket cells are key controllers of theta-gamma coupled rhythms in the hippocampus

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Alexandra P Chatzikalymniou
   2. Spandan Sengupta
   3. Jeremie Lefebvre
   4. Frances K Skinner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper reports a useful set of results that uses a reduced network model based on a previously published large-scale network model to explain the generation of theta-gamma rhythms in the hippocampus. Combining the detailed and reduced models and comparing their results is a powerful approach. However, the evidence for the main claim that CCK+ basket cells play a key role in theta-gamma coupling in the hippocampus is currently incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. BUB-1 and CENP-C recruit PLK-1 to control chromosome alignment and segregation during meiosis I in C. elegans oocytes

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Samuel JP Taylor
   2. Laura Bel Borja
   3. Flavie Soubigou
   4. Jack Houston
   5. Dhanya K Cheerambathur
   6. Federico Pelisch

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental work addresses the role of the mitotic kinase PLK-1 in meiosis, using C. elegans as a model system. The valuable findings are convincing and combine beautiful cell biology and biochemical assays. The work will be of broad interest to people working on Plk1 and/or in meiosis in many different systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Bidirectional promoter activity from expression cassettes can drive off-target repression of neighboring gene translation

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Emily Nicole Powers
   2. Charlene Chan
   3. Ella Doron-Mandel
   4. Lidia Llacsahuanga Allcca
   5. Jenny Kim Kim
   6. Marko Jovanovic
   7. Gloria Ann Brar

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Powers and colleagues reveal that commonly used "genetic markers" (selectable cassettes that allow for genome modification) may lead to unintended consequences and unanticipated phenotypes. These consequences arise from cryptic expression directed from within the cassettes into adjacent genomic regions. In this work, they identify a particularly strong example of marker interference with a neighboring gene's expression and develop and test next-generation tools that circumvent the problem. The work will be primarily of interest to yeast biologists using these types of tools and interpreting these types of data.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Bidirectional promoter activity from expression cassettes can drive off-target repression of neighboring gene translation

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Emily Nicole Powers
   2. Charlene Chan
   3. Ella Doron-Mandel
   4. Lidia Llacsahuanga Allcca
   5. Jenny Kim Kim
   6. Marko Jovanovic
   7. Gloria Ann Brar

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Powers and colleagues reveal that commonly used "genetic markers" (selectable cassettes that allow for genome modification) may lead to unintended consequences and unanticipated phenotypes. These consequences arise from cryptic expression directed from within the cassettes into adjacent genomic regions. In this work, they identify a particularly strong example of marker interference with a neighboring gene's expression and develop and test next-generation tools that circumvent the problem. The work will be primarily of interest to yeast biologists using these types of tools and interpreting these types of data.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Calcium dependence of both lobes of calmodulin is involved in binding to a cytoplasmic domain of SK channels

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. David B Halling
    2. Ashley E Philpo
    3. Richard W Aldrich

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This manuscript provides compelling evidence that in response to calcium, the C-lobe of calmodulin changes its interaction with the C-terminal domain of an SK2 small-conductance calcium-activated potassium channel. These findings will be of interest to those in the field of ion channels and calcium signaling as they are valuable to understanding the molecular mechanics by which calcium activates SK2 channels, which are important for a wide variety of physiological signaling processes.

    Reviewed by eLife