eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Precise and stable edge orientation signaling by human first-order tactile neurons

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Vaishnavi Sukumar
   2. Roland S Johansson
   3. J Andrew Pruszynski

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper will be of broad interest to anyone aiming to understand the neural basis of human touch perception. This is an important paper that provides compelling evidence for peripheral tactile encoding of orientation that reflects perceptual capabilities, by using a wide range of stimulus conditions. The results will be valuable to inform both future experiments and computational investigations into the neural representation and processing of small tactile spatial features at the edge of perceptual resolvability and on the emergence of invariant representations in touch more generally.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Patterns of interdivision time correlations reveal hidden cell cycle factors

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Fern A Hughes
   2. Alexis R Barr
   3. Philipp Thomas

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work makes an important contribution to the study of the cell cycle and inferring mechanisms by studying correlations in division timing between single cells. By treating the problem in a general way and computing over lineage trees, the authors can infer timescales in the underlying mechanism. This approach is able to detect a general role of circadian rhythms in cell cycle control. The method is validated on data sets from bacterial and mammalian cells and can suggest when additional measurements are needed to distinguish competing models. This paper is of broad interest to scientists in the fields of cell growth, cell division, and cell-cycle control.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Macroscopic control of cell electrophysiology through ion channel expression

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Mario García-Navarrete
   2. Merisa Avdovic
   3. Sara Pérez-Garcia
   4. Diego Ruiz Sanchis
   5. Krzysztof Wabnik

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript will be of interest to those working on non-neuronal bioelectricity, particular synthetic biologists and bioengineers. The primary contribution is the ability to leverage engineered gene circuits to control cellular membrane potential. We find issue, however, with the presentation of the data in this work as electrical communication since the synchronous behavior largely arises from external chemical stimuli.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Homeostatic regulation through strengthening of neuronal network-correlated synaptic inputs

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Samuel J Barnes
   2. Georg B Keller
   3. Tara Keck

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     When sensory inputs, such as vision or sound, are chronically disabled, the loss of input activity is counterbalanced by the upregulation of synaptic activity. In this study, the authors provide evidence that instead of synapses that directly represent the sensory information, synapses that show correlated intrinsic network activity are the ones that undergo the change upon sensory deprivation. This fundamental and important paper will be useful to readers in the fields of experience-dependent plasticity, sensory cortical coding, and homeostatic plasticity. While the key claims of the manuscript are well supported by the data, minor changes are suggested for clarification, including the fact that the present study has addressed homeostatic responses in adult animals rather than in juvenile animals with which homeostatic plasticity has been actively studied to date.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. An EcR probe reveals mechanisms of the ecdysone-mediated switch from repression-to-activation on target genes in the larval wing disc

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Joanna Wardwell-Ozgo
   2. Douglas Terry
   3. Colby Schweibenz
   4. Michael Tu
   5. Ola Solimon
   6. David Schofeld
   7. Kenneth Moberg

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The manuscript by Wardwell-Ozgo and co-authors describes a thorough and interesting study that explores the mechanisms through which a hormone receptor can both repress and activate gene transcription. They have conducted an impressive number of experiments all aimed at showing that by using their new transgenic tool, and Ecdysone Receptor (EcR) ligand binding domain sponge, they can demonstrate that EcR activity is important for eliciting both types of ecdysone responses, repression, and activation, in the Drosophila wing disc and that the EcR binding partner Smarter is essential for the repressive function. The differences in expression levels have however not been quantified, which would lend greater support to their claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Transcriptional profiling of Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome fibroblasts reveals deficits in mesenchymal stem cell commitment to differentiation related to early events in endochondral ossification

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Rebeca San Martin
   2. Priyojit Das
   3. Jacob T Sanders
   4. Ashtyn M Hill
   5. Rachel Patton McCord

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript is of interest to researchers investigating genetic mechanisms of aging and transcriptional regulation of developmental processes in mesenchyme-derived tissues. In this study, fibroblast cell lines from patients with and without Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria were compared to pinpoint the molecular mechanisms leading to the phenotypes of persons with this condition. The identification of five major dysregulated functional hubs in fibroblast cell lines derived from Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) patients provides a unique opportunity for others working on this disorder to utilize animal models to validate the authors' hypotheses.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. N-terminal domain on dystroglycan enables LARGE1 to extend matriglycan on α-dystroglycan and prevents muscular dystrophy

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Hidehiko Okuma
   2. Jeffrey M Hord
   3. Ishita Chandel
   4. David Venzke
   5. Mary E Anderson
   6. Ameya S Walimbe
   7. Soumya Joseph
   8. Zeita Gastel
   9. Yuji Hara
   10. Fumiaki Saito
   11. Kiichiro Matsumura
   12. Kevin P Campbell

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors show that the amino terminus of dystroglycan is required for the production of full-length matriglycan, and in its absence, a shorter matriglycan is produced that is still capable of binding laminin. alpha-DGN deficient mice have abnormal neuromuscular synapses and reduced lengthening contraction-induced force. Overall, the well-controlled and convincing data mostly support the main conclusions, which will be of interest to scientists in membrane biology, muscle biology, and glycobiology.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Mouse B2 SINE elements function as IFN-inducible enhancers

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Isabella Horton
   2. Conor J Kelly
   3. Adam Dziulko
   4. David M Simpson
   5. Edward B Chuong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper will be of interest to scientists studying species-specific immune responses and those studying how transposable elements rewire transcriptional regulatory networks. The work describes a new class of TEs that may act as enhancers of immune genes in mice. A combination of computational and experimental data supports most but not all conclusions in the paper.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. A generalizable brain extraction net (BEN) for multimodal MRI data from rodents, nonhuman primates, and humans

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Ziqi Yu
   2. Xiaoyang Han
   3. Wenjing Xu
   4. Jie Zhang
   5. Carsten Marr
   6. Dinggang Shen
   7. Tingying Peng
   8. Xiao-Yong Zhang
   9. Jianfeng Feng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This article is a valuable contribution to the field of neuroimaging. The paper proposes a deep neural network for brain extraction that generalises across domains, including species, scanners, and MRI sequences. Although in some sense brain extraction is not a challenging problem for deep learning, domain generalisation can be. The authors provide solid evidence that their approach works though it may need to be precisely matched to the training data.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. The conserved centrosomin motif, γTuNA, forms a dimer that directly activates microtubule nucleation by the γ-tubulin ring complex (γTuRC)

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Michael J Rale
    2. Brianna Romer
    3. Brian P Mahon
    4. Sophie M Travis
    5. Sabine Petry

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This paper is of interest to cell biologists studying the mechanisms and control of microtubule nucleation. In this work, the authors use a novel protocol for the purification of gamma-TuRCs and for the production of gamma-TuNA that enables them to demonstrate a clear activating effect of gamma-TuNA on microtubule nucleation that depends on the dimerization of gamma-TuNA protein chains.

    Reviewed by eLife