eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Synaptic Encoding of Time in Working Memory

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Gianluigi Mongillo
   2. Misha Tsodyks

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper develops a fundamental theory that explains how the brain can hold in working memory not only the identity but also the order of presented stimuli. Previous theories did not explain the ability of people to immediately recall the correct order of the stimulus presentation. The authors present compelling evidence that this can be achieved through synaptic augmentation, an experimentally observed phenomenon with a time scale of tens of seconds.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. The evolution of interdisciplinarity and internationalization in scientific journals

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Huaxia Zhou
   2. Luis A Nunes Amaral

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study uses data from OpenAlex on more than 50 million journal articles in over 50,000 research journals to examine the dynamics of interdisciplinarity and international collaboration in research journals. The data analytics used to quantify disciplinary and national diversity are convincing, and support the claims that journals have become more diverse in both aspects. The revisions made by the authors have addressed the small number of concerns the reviewers had about the original version.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Single neurons detect spatiotemporal activity transitions through STP and EI imbalance

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Aditya Asopa
   2. Upinder Singh Bhalla

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study examines excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance in the CA3-CA1 circuit of the hippocampus. Experimental and computational modeling results are presented, but these results provide incomplete evidence to support the paper's main claims due to shortcomings in the experimental and modeling approaches, as well as concerns about the neurobiological relevance of the results.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Quantifying Intracellular Mechanosensitive Response upon Spatially Defined Mechano-Chemical Triggering

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elaheh Zare-Eelanjegh
   2. Renard TM Lewis
   3. Ines Lüchtefeld
   4. Ulrike Kutay
   5. Tomaso Zambelli

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study provides evidence that the integration of the nuclear envelope into the endoplasmic reticulum provides a mechanism for mechanical integration across this continuous membrane system. If robustly demonstrated, this work would open up new avenues for studying organelle membrane tension homeostasis. While the evidence is largely convincing and carefully quantified, a key limitation is the absence of data demonstrating that microinjection of cytoskeleton-depolymerizing drugs locally disrupts the target network.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Alcohol Attenuates CRF-Induced Excitatory Effects from the Extended Amygdala to Dorsostriatal Cholinergic Interneurons

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Amanda Essoh
   2. Xueyi Xie
   3. Himanshu Gangal
   4. Zhenbo Huang
   5. Ruifeng Chen
   6. Ziyi Li
   7. Xuehua Wang
   8. Valerie Vierkant
   9. Miguel Garza
   10. Lierni Ugartemendia
   11. Maria E Secci
   12. Nicholas W Gilpin
   13. Nicholas J Justice
   14. Robert O Messing
   15. Jun Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work shows that corticotrophin-releasing factor is delivered monosynaptically to dorsal striatal cholinergic interneurons from the central amygdala and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. CRF increases cholinergic interneuron firing and release of acetylcholine, and this action is attenuated by pre-exposure to ethanol, suggesting a potential role in stress- and alcohol use disorders. This revision addressed prior concerns, presented convincing evidence supporting the conclusions, and set the stage for additional studies.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The lipocone superfamily, a unifying theme in metabolism of lipids, peptidoglycan and exopolysaccharides, inter-organismal conflicts and immunity

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. A Maxwell Burroughs
   2. Gianlucca G Nicastro
   3. L Aravind

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study presents a compelling and comprehensive analysis of the newly defined Lipocone superfamily, offering unprecedented insights into the evolutionary origins of Wnt proteins. The authors provide evidence that this superfamily evolved from membrane proteins. The work is exemplary in its use of sequence analysis and structural modeling and will be of broad interest to researchers studying protein evolution and enzymology.

     [Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

   Reviewed by eLife

7. G1 and G2 ApolipoproteinL1 modulate macrophage inflammation and lipid accumulation through the polyamine pathway

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Esther Liu
   2. Matthew Wright
   3. Andrew O Kearney
   4. Tiffany Caza
   5. Johnson Y Yang
   6. Valerie Garcia
   7. Amal O Dadi
   8. Shuta Ishibe
   9. Navdeep S Chandel
   10. Hanrui Zhang
   11. Edward B Thorp
   12. Jennie Lin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors study how apolipoprotein L1 variants impact inflammation and lipid accumulation in macrophages. The findings will be useful for researchers investigating macrophage metabolism and inflammation. The discovery that the polyamine spermidine in part mediates such effects is interesting, but the supporting evidence for a physiologically relevant role is currently incomplete due to the lack of relevant in vivo studies.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. The influence of temporal context on vision over multiple time scales

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Kacie Lee
   2. Reuben Rideaux

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study shows how past experiences shape perception across short, medium, and long time scales, using a single behavioural paradigm and reanalysed EEG data. It provides convincing evidence for two processes across all scales: an attention-dependent mechanism that speeds responses to expected events, and an attention-independent mechanism where expected events are encoded less precisely, consistent with feedforward dampening. The work offers a unifying account of temporal context effects, though stronger brain-behaviour links, integration with serial dependence attraction and repulsion models, and extension to other timescale definitions would further strengthen the contribution.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. SoxB1 family members inhibit Wnt signaling to promote maturation and deposition of stable neuromasts by the zebrafish Posterior Lateral Line primordium

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Greg Palardy
   2. Kyeong-won Yoo
   3. Sana Fatma
   4. Abhishek Mukherjee
   5. Chongmin Wang
   6. Priyanka Ravi
   7. Ajay B Chitnis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study explores the regulation of collective cell migration and tissue patterning in the zebrafish posterior lateral line primordium by SoxB1 transcription factors. The authors provide evidence that SoxB1 genes interact with Wnt and Fgf signaling pathways to control neuromast deposition and spacing, a process central to sensory organ development. The work offers mechanistic insight into the self-organization of migrating tissues and adds to the understanding of how transcriptional networks integrate with signaling pathways during morphogenesis. However, the strength of the evidence supporting several key conclusions is incomplete due to insufficient validation of mutant and knockdown tools, lack of quantitative analysis, and unclear experimental design details; additional quantification and more rigorous verification of gene knockdown or loss-of-function tools are needed to support the proposed model.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Correlates of protection against African swine fever virus identified by a systems immunology approach

    This article has 12 authors:

    1. Kirill Lotonin
    2. Francisco Brito
    3. Kemal Mehinagic
    4. Obdulio García-Nicolás
    5. Matthias Liniger
    6. Noelle Donzé
    7. Sylvie Python
    8. Stephanie Talker
    9. Tosca Ploegaert
    10. Nicolas Ruggli
    11. Charaf Benarafa
    12. Artur Summerfield

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study provides valuable findings regarding potential correlates of protection against the African swine fever virus. The evidence supporting the claims is solid, although analysis using a higher number of animals and other virus strains will be required to further evaluate the relevance of the immune parameters associated to protection. The work will be of broad interest to veterinary immunologists, and particularly those working on African swine fever.

    Reviewed by eLife