eLife

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1. Dopamine in the dorsal bed nucleus of stria terminalis signals Pavlovian sign-tracking and reward violations

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Utsav Gyawali
   2. David A Martin
   3. Fangmiao Sun
   4. Yulong Li
   5. Donna Calu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Authors investigated the role of dopamine (DA) release via GRABDA in the dorsal bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (dBNST) in sign and goal tracking behavior, in response to systemic fentanyl, and to fentanyl self-administration. The behavioral experiments were well-conducted and provide novel information about BNST DA in theories of learning and reinforcement. Identified limitations had to do with acknowledgment and discussion of divergent sources of DA innervation, the low sample size in fentanyl experiments with the exclusion of a large number of animals, and a need for additional analyses of the photometry data and/or control recordings to rule out spontaneous transients in this region.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Brown adipocytes local response to thyroid hormone is required for adaptive thermogenesis in adult male mice

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yanis Zekri
   2. Romain Guyot
   3. Inés Garteizgogeascoa Suñer
   4. Laurence Canaple
   5. Amandine Gautier Stein
   6. Justine Vily Petit
   7. Denise Aubert
   8. Sabine Richard
   9. Frédéric Flamant
   10. Karine Gauthier

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The manuscript by Yanis Zekri et al identifies the direct T3 target genes that are important in thyroid hormone signaling in brown adipose tissue (BAT). The findings reported in this manuscript are significant and fundamental to our understanding of thyroid hormone action in response to environmental changes. The strength of the evidence presented with the novel methodological approaches used makes the manuscript exceptional in the area of BAT biology and T3 regulation of adaptive thermogenesis.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Endocytic trafficking determines cellular tolerance of presynaptic opioid signaling

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Damien Jullié
   2. Camila Benitez
   3. Tracy A Knight
   4. Milos S Simic
   5. Mark von Zastrow

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript examines the inhibition of transmitter release induced by the activation of opioid receptors, both MOR and DOR, using a novel imaging method. The authors specifically examine how the inhibition of transmitter release is changed following prolonged exposure to saturating concentrations of agonists. They showed convincingly that there is a depletion of plasma membrane-associated receptors and suggest that the decline in receptors at the plasma membrane underlies presynaptic tolerance. This work addresses a long-standing question about how tolerance develops at the presynaptic level and indicates that the location of receptors is critically important in the development of tolerance. This work is fundamental and a game changer in the understanding of tolerance at the cellular level.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Contrast polarity-specific mapping improves efficiency of neuronal computation for collision detection

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Richard Burkett Dewell
   2. Ying Zhu
   3. Margaret Eisenbrandt
   4. Richard Morse
   5. Fabrizio Gabbiani

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists who study visual processing or are interested in dendritic integration. The authors used calcium imaging, pharmacology, and electrophysiology to investigate how a large, loom-sensitive neuron in grasshoppers integrates visual input to respond to both light and dark looming objects. These experiments support the finding that the integration is done by two distinct arbors of the neuronal dendritic tree, one of which loses retinotopic information. The authors suggest potential advantages of this dendritic arrangement.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. A prebiotic diet modulates microglial states and motor deficits in α-synuclein overexpressing mice

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Reem Abdel-Haq
   2. Johannes CM Schlachetzki
   3. Joseph C Boktor
   4. Thaisa M Cantu-Jungles
   5. Taren Thron
   6. Mengying Zhang
   7. John W Bostick
   8. Tahmineh Khazaei
   9. Sujatha Chilakala
   10. Livia H Morais
   11. Greg Humphrey
   12. Ali Keshavarzian
   13. Jonathan E Katz
   14. Matthew Thomson
   15. Rob Knight
   16. Viviana Gradinaru
   17. Bruce R Hamaker
   18. Christopher K Glass
   19. Sarkis K Mazmanian

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The complex mechanisms through which diet impact Parkinson's Disease are unclear, limiting the ability to guide patients to an optimal diet. Here, researchers use a mouse model to test the impact of dietary fiber, revealing changes in gut microbes and immune cells in the brain. This study raises intriguing hypotheses about how diet-induced changes in the microbiome could lead to changes in brain function.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Taxonium, a web-based tool for exploring large phylogenetic trees

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Theo Sanderson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Sanderson developed novel interactive software for visualizing phylogenetic trees representing millions of sequences. This is a fundamental advance over previous software that is typically limited to trees with a few thousand tips. Taxonium has been used intensively by the virus evolution community over the past months and has thus already proven its utility and performance.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

    Reviewed by eLife