eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. m6A modification of U6 snRNA modulates usage of two major classes of pre-mRNA 5’ splice site

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Matthew T Parker
   2. Beth K Soanes
   3. Jelena Kusakina
   4. Antoine Larrieu
   5. Katarzyna Knop
   6. Nisha Joy
   7. Friedrich Breidenbach
   8. Anna V Sherwood
   9. Geoffrey J Barton
   10. Sebastian M Fica
   11. Brendan H Davies
   12. Gordon G Simpson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is an important paper reporting that an adenosine methyltransferase in the model plant Arabidopsis functions to target a key RNA component of the spliceosome, as in fission yeast, and thereby contributes to intron recognition. By contrast, the authors report no major role for the methyltransferase in targeting mRNAs, as reported in previous studies in Arabidopsis. While some of the evidence is convincing, other evidence is incomplete. The conclusions that mRNAs are not a significant target and that specific intronic sequences define sensitivity to the methyltransferase require additional support.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Neuroendocrinology of the lung revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Christin S Kuo
   2. Spyros Darmanis
   3. Alex Diaz de Arce
   4. Yin Liu
   5. Nicole Almanzar
   6. Timothy Ting-Hsuan Wu
   7. Stephen R Quake
   8. Mark A Krasnow

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study delineates the transcriptomics of lung neuroendocrine cells and provides important new information on the nature of these cells in normal mouse lungs and in a sample of a human lung carcinoid. It will inform future studies investing the roles of PNECs in health and disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Expansive linguistic representations to predict interpretable odor mixture discriminability

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Amit Dhurandhar
   2. Hongyang Li
   3. Guillermo A Cecchi
   4. Pablo Meyer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Dhurhandar and colleagues developed a computational method that predicts discriminability of odor mixtures based on chemical structures of component molecules. The model first transforms chemical structures into natural language descriptions of odor, and then perform Lasso regressions to obtain a compact transformation into discriminability. The results suggest that the model performs better compared to that without transformation to language descriptions, yet, there are some issues that need to be addressed to make strong conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Structure-guided isoform identification for the human transcriptome

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Markus J Sommer
   2. Sooyoung Cha
   3. Ales Varabyou
   4. Natalia Rincon
   5. Sukhwan Park
   6. Ilia Minkin
   7. Mihaela Pertea
   8. Martin Steinegger
   9. Steven L Salzberg

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study applies AlphaFold to the CHESS selection of transcripts with the goal of generating predicted 3D protein structures and a quality measure of folding, the pLDDT score. From these data, the authors build a database for result exploration, documented by several examples, including proteins, where the authors propose the pLDDT score as a measure of presumed superior biological functionality over other isoforms. These results will be highly relevant for anyone working with proteins that occur in different isoforms.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Polygenic risk scores for the prediction of common cancers in East Asians: A population-based prospective cohort study

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Peh Joo Ho
   2. Iain BeeHuat Tan
   3. Dawn Qingqing Chong
   4. Chiea Chuen Khor
   5. Jian-Min Yuan
   6. Woon-Puay Koh
   7. Rajkumar Dorajoo
   8. Jingmei Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study reveals the role of polygenic scores for four commonly diagnosed cancers with high genetic predisposition (breast, prostate, colorectal, and lung) in East Asian populations, which is developed in participants of European descent. The data is convincing that is derived from a prospective cohort including 21,694 Singaporean participants of East Asian descent. The work will be of interest and provide great help to disease specialists in the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Generating variability from motor primitives during infant locomotor development

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elodie Hinnekens
   2. Marianne Barbu-Roth
   3. Manh-Cuong Do
   4. Bastien Berret
   5. Caroline Teulier

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     In learning to walk, infants must balance the need to explore their movement repertoire with the need to establish regular movement patterns. Using a longitudinal approach, this paper suggests that while young infants generate high variability from a small number of regular patterns ('primitives'), older infants use a greater number of primitives with less variability. These interesting conclusions are not currently fully supported by the small and somewhat selective sample of data, and some alternative explanations need to be considered more thoroughly.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Amino acid transporter SLC38A5 regulates developmental and pathological retinal angiogenesis

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Zhongxiao Wang
   2. Felix Yemanyi
   3. Alexandra K Blomfield
   4. Kiran Bora
   5. Shuo Huang
   6. Chi-Hsiu Liu
   7. William R Britton
   8. Steve S Cho
   9. Yohei Tomita
   10. Zhongjie Fu
   11. Jian-xing Ma
   12. Wen-hong Li
   13. Jing Chen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper will be of interest to those studying retinal angiogenesis and endothelial cell biology. The authors performed rigorous data analysis and presented a logical, well-written report. The key conclusions of the manuscript are supported by the data and uncover a novel factor for retinal endothelial cell growth.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Right inferior frontal gyrus damage is associated with impaired initiation of inhibitory control, but not its implementation

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Yoojeong Choo
   2. Dora Matzke
   3. Mark D Bowren
   4. Daniel Tranel
   5. Jan R Wessel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study takes a fresh view of the hypothesis that right inferior frontal gyrus is critical in inhibitory control in humans, as assessed by the widely-used stop signal task. It applies recent development in modeling and EEG measures in patients with focal brain damage, yielding causal insights. It will be of interest to neuroscientists and clinical researchers who study the brain basis of response control. Reviewers found this to be a strong, hypothesis-driven study that makes new progress on an important topic.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Evidence for RNA or protein transport from somatic tissues to the male reproductive tract in mouse

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Vera Rinaldi
   2. Kathleen Messemer
   3. Kathleen Desevin
   4. Fengyun Sun
   5. Bethany C Berry
   6. Shweta Kukreja
   7. Andrew R Tapper
   8. Amy J Wagers
   9. Oliver J Rando

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript reports data consistent with a new and unanticipated phenomenon: that Cre or its mRNA may be transmitted between tissues in the mouse and that the male reproductive tract (epididymis) appears to be the most common target of such transported molecules. The data serve as a timely warning to mouse researchers about an unexpected complication of Cre-mediated gene manipulation.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. DNA-Stimulated Liquid-Liquid phase separation by eukaryotic topoisomerase ii modulates catalytic function

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Joshua Jeong
    2. Joyce H Lee
    3. Claudia C Carcamo
    4. Matthew W Parker
    5. James M Berger

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      Type II topoisomerases are essential players in virtually every aspect of genome organization and function of all organisms. The in vitro data presented here clearly demonstrate that eukaryotic type II topoisomerases phase separate under physiological conditions, forming liquid-liquid condensates, and that the outcomes of type topoisomerase II activity on DNA are altered in these condensates. The experiments and methods are sound, clearly described, and fully support the insightful and carefully formulated interpretation of the data. This work has broad implications for dissecting and delineating the myriad fundamental roles of this centrally important molecule.

    Reviewed by eLife