eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Activity in developing prefrontal cortex is shaped by sleep and sensory experience

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Lex J Gómez
   2. James C Dooley
   3. Mark S Blumberg

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript examines the functional relationship between neural activities in several cortical areas (such as the primary and secondary motor cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex) and the different sleep states or under anesthesia. The quality of the recordings in infant rats is excellent. Results are important in the field of research into the role of active sleep in the neuronal and circuit mechanisms of early cortical development. Some of the findings presented and hypothesis developed are novel, but the overall demonstration remains incomplete and further in-depth analysis and additional experiments are required to fully support the authors' claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Targeting the fatty acid binding proteins disrupts multiple myeloma cell cycle progression and MYC signaling

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Mariah Farrell
   2. Heather Fairfield
   3. Michelle Karam
   4. Anastasia D'Amico
   5. Connor S Murphy
   6. Carolyne Falank
   7. Romanos Sklavenitis Pistofidi
   8. Amanda Cao
   9. Catherine R Marinac
   10. Julie A Dragon
   11. Lauren McGuinness
   12. Carlos G Gartner
   13. Reagan Di Iorio
   14. Edward Jachimowicz
   15. Victoria DeMambro
   16. Calvin Vary
   17. Michaela R Reagan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript will be of interest to researchers within the fields of haematological and bone oncology. It reveals a novel effect of FABP5 inhibition to reduce myeloma growth both in vitro and in vivo, with convincing supporting associations between FABP5 expression and survival in patients with myeloma.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Doublecortin and JIP3 are neural-specific counteracting regulators of dynein-mediated retrograde trafficking

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Xiaoqin Fu
   2. Lu Rao
   3. Peijun Li
   4. Xinglei Liu
   5. Qi Wang
   6. Alexander I Son
   7. Arne Gennerich
   8. Judy Shih-Hwa Liu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In their paper, Rao, Li et al. explore the mechanisms by which the microtubule-associated protein, doublecortin (DCX), functions in regulating retrograde transport in neurons. They find that DCX affects the dynein-microtubule interaction to perturb its motion. Impressively, they reconstitute a dynein-dynactin-JIP3 complex, validating JIP3 as a bona fide adaptor, and show that DCX disrupts the transport of this processive complex. This mechanism will be useful in understanding how mutations in DCX cause lissencephaly and this paper will be of interest to those in the cytoskeletal and neurobiology fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Predictive modeling reveals that higher-order cooperativity drives transcriptional repression in a synthetic developmental enhancer

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Yang Joon Kim
   2. Kaitlin Rhee
   3. Jonathan Liu
   4. Selene Jeammet
   5. Meghan A Turner
   6. Stephen J Small
   7. Hernan G Garcia

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The work by Kim et al., used synthetic constructs in Drosophila to examine the relationship between regulators (activator/repressor) and transcription initiation. By measuring regulator concentrations and the corresponding RNA polymerase initiation rates in different synthetic constructs and using a thermodynamic model, the authors concluded that that higher-order cooperativities between the repressor on adjacent binding sites, and that between the repressor and RNA polymerase are needed to explain the observed response curves in RNA polymerase loading rate. This work targets a challenging question in eukaryotic transcription regulation, where higher-order cooperativity between different molecular components, in addition to simple transcription factor binding and unbinding, is often necessary to account for observed promoter behaviors when multiple elements (repressors, mediators, activators) exist.

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5. Sublytic gasdermin-D pores captured in atomistic molecular simulations

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Stefan L Schaefer
   2. Gerhard Hummer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper will be of interest to cell biologists, structural biologists, and biophysicists studying programmed cell death, membrane transport, and protein-lipid interactions. The simulation data presented offers atomistic detail of how gasdermin-D N-terminal domains assemble on the plasma membrane and trigger the formation of membrane pores which lead to pyroptosis. The study is well designed and the resulting data are rigorously analyzed; however, some clarifications and additional data are required to fully justify the conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Mcm2 promotes stem cell differentiation via its ability to bind H3-H4

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Xiaowei Xu
   2. Xu Hua
   3. Kyle Brown
   4. Xiaojun Ren
   5. Zhiguo Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript reports a novel role of Mcm2 licensing factor and helicase subunit of the Mcm2-Mcm7 complex in the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into neuronal lineages. A series of compelling experimental manipulations dissect the abnormalities in the formation of heterochromatin at pluripotent genes and the resolution of bivalent chromatin domains at lineage-specific genes in differentiation in response to mutation of the histone binding domain of Mcm2. These findings provide new insights into the replication-independent roles of Mcm2. This paper will be of interest to scientists working on development and embryonal cell differentiation.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Sensory conflict disrupts circadian rhythms in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Cory A Berger
   2. Ann M Tarrant

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Understanding the integration and contribution of different combinations of environmental cues to the synchronization of the daily oscillator is important, because it provides insight into how organisms might be able to distinguish (and weight) between irregular (or in the tidal zone highly complex) versus regular individual daily changes of light and temperature. The study, which is thoroughly conducted and provides an impressive amount of experimental and analytical work, dissects the effects of sensory conflict on behavior and gene expression rhythms.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Neuronal temperature perception induces specific defenses that enable C. elegans to cope with the enhanced reactivity of hydrogen peroxide at high temperature

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Francesco A Servello
   2. Rute Fernandes
   3. Matthias Eder
   4. Nathan Harris
   5. Olivier MF Martin
   6. Natasha Oswal
   7. Anders Lindberg
   8. Nohelly Derosiers
   9. Piali Sengupta
   10. Nicholas Stroustrup
   11. Javier Apfeld

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The ability of organisms to cope with environmental stressors can be modified by their physiological conditions as well as life experience. Here, taking advantage of the tractability of the nematode C. elegans, the authors find that exposure to elevated temperatures enhances defenses against peroxides, agents whose toxicity is enhanced by temperature. The finding that a key thermosensory neuron is required for this phenomenon is an important advance in understanding the underlying mechanism; further, the authors' proposal that this is an "enhancer sensing" phenomenon is interesting and thought-provoking. The multidisciplinary approach and mechanistic detail revealed by this work will make it of interest to readers in the fields of sensory biology, signal transduction, and physiology.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Little skate genome provides insights into genetic programs essential for limb-based locomotion

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. DongAhn Yoo
   2. Junhee Park
   3. Chul Lee
   4. Injun Song
   5. Young Ho Lee
   6. Tery Yun
   7. Hyemin Lee
   8. Adriana Heguy
   9. Jae Yong Han
   10. Jeremy S Dasen
   11. Heebal Kim
   12. Myungin Baek

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript provides an improved version of the little skate genome, which will be of great interest to the field of comparative genomics and evolutionary biology. The authors use the genome to compare gene expression and chromatin accessibility profiles in motor neurons of the little skate and other species (mouse, chicken), aiming to predict conserved and divergent gene regulatory mechanisms underlying motor neuron development. While the manuscript contributes a valuable resource to the field, more rigorous analyses and experimental validation are needed to support the major claims of this study.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Alternative splicing downstream of EMT enhances phenotypic plasticity and malignant behavior in colon cancer

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Tong Xu
    2. Mathijs Verhagen
    3. Rosalie Joosten
    4. Wenjie Sun
    5. Andrea Sacchetti
    6. Leonel Munoz Sagredo
    7. Véronique Orian-Rousseau
    8. Riccardo Fodde

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This study provides a valuable analysis of the splicing landscape in colon cancer cells that have properties intermediate between those typically found in primary cancers ("epithelial") and those that are spreading by metastasis ("mesenchymal"). The strength of evidence provided is wide ranging and convincing, and supports current ideas that changes in the way that RNA from particular genes is processed plays a key role in cancer spread.

    Reviewed by eLife