eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. How human runners regulate footsteps on uneven terrain

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Nihav Dhawale
   2. Madhusudhan Venkadesan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper presents findings from a novel experimental study of the dynamics of human overground running on naturalistically uneven terrain. The terrain used in the experiments has mildly stochastic undulating roughness, a condition that closely resembles many natural terrain conditions, such as trail running. The authors present evidence that humans use open-loop intrinsically stable strategies to run on this terrain, and do not visually guided foot placement. The findings make an important contribution toward understanding the context-dependent role of vision in navigating uneven terrain.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Emergent color categorization in a neural network trained for object recognition

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jelmer P de Vries
   2. Arash Akbarinia
   3. Alban Flachot
   4. Karl R Gegenfurtner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper addresses the long-standing problem of color categorization and the forces that bring it about, which can be potentially interesting to researchers in cognition, visual neuroscience, society, and culture. In particular, the authors show that as a "model organism", a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained with the human-labelled image dataset ImageNet for object recognition can represent color categories. The finding reveals important features of deep neural networks in color processing and can also guide future theoretical and empirical work in high-level color vision.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Antibody levels following vaccination against SARS-CoV-2: associations with post-vaccination infection and risk factors in two UK longitudinal studies

   This article has 37 authors:

   1. Nathan J Cheetham
   2. Milla Kibble
   3. Andrew Wong
   4. Richard J Silverwood
   5. Anika Knuppel
   6. Dylan M Williams
   7. Olivia KL Hamilton
   8. Paul H Lee
   9. Charis Bridger Staatz
   10. Giorgio Di Gessa
   11. Jingmin Zhu
   12. Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi
   13. George B Ploubidis
   14. Ellen J Thompson
   15. Ruth CE Bowyer
   16. Xinyuan Zhang
   17. Golboo Abbasian
   18. Maria Paz Garcia
   19. Deborah Hart
   20. Jeffrey Seow
   21. Carl Graham
   22. Neophytos Kouphou
   23. Sam Acors
   24. Michael H Malim
   25. Ruth E Mitchell
   26. Kate Northstone
   27. Daniel Major-Smith
   28. Sarah Matthews
   29. Thomas Breeze
   30. Michael Crawford
   31. Lynn Molloy
   32. Alex SF Kwong
   33. Katie Doores
   34. Nishi Chaturvedi
   35. Emma L Duncan
   36. Nicholas J Timpson
   37. Claire J Steves

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors collected and analyzed blood samples from >9,000 participants from two cross-sectional cohort studies in the UK, the ALSPAC cohort and the TwinsUK cohort. They measured anti-Nucleocapsid and anti-Spike antibodies using the collected blood samples. They investigated the variation in antibody levels and risk factors for lower antibody levels following each round of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. They identify that following the third vaccination, risk factors associated with low antibody response after the first vaccination are less likely to lead to sub-protective levels. While this finding is of potential importance, the presentation of the data is diffuse and not focused at times, and more discussion is needed to highlight its relevance to the current stage of the pandemic.

   Reviewed by eLife, ScreenIT

4. Polygenic adaptation from standing genetic variation allows rapid ecotype formation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Nico Fuhrmann
   2. Celine Prakash
   3. Tobias S Kaiser

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study combines phenotypic analysis, quantitative genetics and population genomics to propose that multiple genes underlie adaptive divergence in a marine midge system linked to tidal rhythm. Genes with a plausible role in perceiving and responding to lunar information are among the loci that most highly differentiate populations with distinct behaviors, but how much of this might be due to demography remains unclear. The evidence from quantitative trait locus is also deemed incomplete at this point.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Heritability enrichment in context-specific regulatory networks improves phenotype-relevant tissue identification

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Zhanying Feng
   2. Zhana Duren
   3. Jingxue Xin
   4. Qiuyue Yuan
   5. Yaoxi He
   6. Bing Su
   7. Wing Hung Wong
   8. Yong Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript is of interest to scientists studying the genetics of complex human diseases. The approach introduced here is potentially useful for the identification of tissues linked to complex disease heritability. Currently, the key claims of the paper are not entirely supported by the data. The claims may become well supported once the authors improve statistical rigor and perform a more comprehensive comparison with other methods.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Magnesium and the magnesium transporter UEX regulate sleep via Ca ²⁺ -dependent CREB signaling and a CNK-ERK pathway

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Xin Yuan
   2. Huimei Zheng
   3. Xiao Xu
   4. Huan Deng
   5. Xiaohang Yang
   6. Yongmei Xi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript provides valuable evidence for the role of magnesium homeostasis and relevant signaling pathway in Drosophila sleep regulation. It will be of interest to cellular biologists and neuroscientists interested in sleep:wake behavior and the potential role of magnesium in promoting sleep. Nevertheless, the evidence for the key claims of the manuscript is incomplete and is not fully supported by the data as reasonable alternative explanations exist.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Quantitative analysis of rabies virus-based synaptic connectivity tracing

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Alexandra Tran-Van-Minh
   2. Zhiwen Ye
   3. Ede Rancz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Tran-Van-Minh et al., attempt to develop a statistical approach which will allow consolidation of new, as well as previously-acquired datasets, to yield biologically significant insights into the logic underlying rabies vectors' expansion from single starter cells. While such work is called for, many of the premises presented here will need to be significantly adjusted, before the approach could be put into widespread use.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Interdependent progression of bidirectional sister replisomes in E. coli

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Po Jui Chen
   2. Anna B McMullin
   3. Bryan J Visser
   4. Qian Mei
   5. Susan M Rosenberg
   6. David Bates

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper reports a fundamental set of new results describing replisome organization and dynamics in E. coli. Cellular sites of active DNA replication (forks) spatially co-localize into structures termed replication factories, but the biological rationale for this fork co-localization has remained unknown. In an elegant study, the authors provide strong evidence that these factories are necessary to both coordinate and promote the progression of colocalized forks, and to help prevent them from spontaneously and prematurely dissociating. Through these findings, it is shown, for the first time, that replisomes' association has a beneficial impact on the bacterium. This is important work that provides robust data in favor of the factory and splitting model.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Clarifying the role of an unavailable distractor in human multiattribute choice

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Yinan Cao
   2. Konstantinos Tsetsos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents an important finding on the decoy effect in multiattribute economic choices in humans. It makes a compelling case for the conclusion that the distractor effect reported in previous articles was confounded with the additive utility difference between the available alternatives. Though the contribution is somewhat narrowly focused with respect to the phenomenon that it addresses - the distractor effect in risky choice, it is important for understanding this particular phenomenon. The main weakness is the complexity of the current manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Axo-vascular coupling mediated by oligodendrocytes

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Alejandro Restrepo
    2. Andrea Trevisiol
    3. Camilo Restrepo-Arango
    4. Constanze Depp
    5. Andrew Octavian Sasmita
    6. Annika Keller
    7. Iva D. Tzvetanova
    8. Johannes Hirrlinger
    9. Klaus-Armin Nave

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This manuscript provides the first cellular analysis of how neuronal activity in axons (in this case the optic nerve) regulates the diameter of nearby blood vessels and hence the energy supply to neuronal axons and their associated cells. This is an important subject because, in a variety of neurological disorders, there is damage to the white matter that may result from a lack of sufficient energy supply. This paper will stimulate work on this important subject.

    Reviewed by eLife