eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. The clinical pharmacology of tafenoquine in the radical cure of Plasmodium vivax malaria: An individual patient data meta-analysis

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. James A Watson
   2. Robert J Commons
   3. Joel Tarning
   4. Julie A Simpson
   5. Alejandro Llanos Cuentas
   6. Marcus VG Lacerda
   7. Justin A Green
   8. Gavin CKW Koh
   9. Cindy S Chu
   10. François H Nosten
   11. Richard N Price
   12. Nicholas PJ Day
   13. Nicholas J White

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This competently performed retrospective analysis presents important findings concerning the clinical use of tafenoquine, a drug against Plasmodium vivax malaria. The assembly of the majority of global tafenoquine pharmacology data from clinical treatment studies provides compelling evidence in support of the drug's regimen that includes an increase in dosing, which would lead to a significant enhancement of the drug efficacy, hence a decrease in recurrent parasitemia. The manuscript could benefit from a more detailed analysis and discussion concerning the side effects of the drug affecting more susceptible populations.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Survival of mineral-bound peptides into the Miocene

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Beatrice Demarchi
   2. Meaghan Mackie
   3. Zhiheng Li
   4. Tao Deng
   5. Matthew J Collins
   6. Julia Clarke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The paper pushes the known preservation of ancient proteins, and their successful recovery, into the late Miocene. The results of the study also have implications for avian taxonomic classification. The findings reported in the paper are a welcome addition to the field of paleoproteomics and encourage future research on ancient proteins in deep antiquity and across various taxa. The paper will be of great interest to paleoscientists.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Presynaptic contact and activity opposingly regulate postsynaptic dendrite outgrowth

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Emily L Heckman
   2. Chris Q Doe

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper deploys elegant genetic tools to understand how synapses are formed in the Drosophila central nervous system. The synaptic connections between two identified neurons in the Drosophila central nervous system are used as a system to document the role of cell ablation and activity in dendrite growth and circuit wiring. In so doing, they identify a brief window of time that appears critical for these wiring and growth decisions.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Participation in the nationwide cervical cancer screening programme in Denmark during the COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Tina Bech Olesen
   2. Henry Jensen
   3. Henrik Møller
   4. Jens Winther Jensen
   5. Marianne Waldstrøm
   6. Berit Andersen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This article shows how the COVID-19 pandemic affected cervical cancer screening participation in the organized screening program of Denmark. Through registry data covering the entire population, the study shows that while short-term (90 days) participation after invitation dropped, long-term (365 days) participation remained stable. These results will be of interest to public health specialists and researchers working on pandemic recovery efforts related to cancer screening worldwide.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Succinate mediates inflammation-induced adrenocortical dysfunction

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Ivona Mateska
   2. Anke Witt
   3. Eman Hagag
   4. Anupam Sinha
   5. Canelif Yilmaz
   6. Evangelia Thanou
   7. Na Sun
   8. Ourania Kolliniati
   9. Maria Patschin
   10. Heba Abdelmegeed
   11. Holger Henneicke
   12. Waldemar Kanczkowski
   13. Ben Wielockx
   14. Christos Tsatsanis
   15. Andreas Dahl
   16. Axel Karl Walch
   17. Ka Wan Li
   18. Mirko Peitzsch
   19. Triantafyllos Chavakis
   20. Vasileia Ismini Alexaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Acute inflammation in mammals activates the hypothalamic pituatary axis leading to increased glucocorticoid release, which is required to restrain the inflammatory response. However, in settings of severe or prolonged inflammation, such as that seen in sepsis, there is reduced adrenal steridogenesis. The studies described in this paper provide a plausible mechanism for adrenal resistance which develops during excessive inflammation.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Coordinated evolution at amino acid sites of SARS-CoV-2 spike

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Alexey Dmitrievich Neverov
   2. Gennady Fedonin
   3. Anfisa Popova
   4. Daria Bykova
   5. Georgii Bazykin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Neverov and colleagues analyze patterns of correlated changes of amino acids in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to identify networks of interacting positions using an improved version of the previously validated method. Identifying such patterns of co-evolution is important for a better understanding of spike-protein evolution. The evidence for the identified co-evolving pairs is solid, though the degree of certainty varies among the different identified groups of potentially interacting positions.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Firing patterns of ventral hippocampal neurons predict the exploration of anxiogenic locations

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hugo Malagon-Vina
   2. Stéphane Ciocchi
   3. Thomas Klausberger

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper is expected to be of interest to systems neuroscientists in the fields of emotion, hippocampal function, and anxiety-related behavior. The authors performed recordings in ventral hippocampus and show that 1) place fields become concentrated near the open areas of a maze, 2) direction-dependent coding decreases in these open areas, and 3) ventral hippocampal population activity in the closed area can be used to predict how mice explore the open area in the immediate future. These valuable findings support a potential role for the ventral hippocampus in the exploration of anxiety-provoking environments, however, the manuscript in its current form is incomplete, with some support for the main findings but also some limitations.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Community composition shapes microbial-specific phenotypes in a cystic fibrosis polymicrobial model system

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Fabrice Jean-Pierre
   2. Thomas H Hampton
   3. Daniel Schultz
   4. Deborah A Hogan
   5. Marie-Christine Groleau
   6. Eric Déziel
   7. George A O'Toole

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This article establishes a model experimental bacterial community to represent the microbiome found in ~1/3 of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) with the goal of understanding why these infections do not respond to treatments that are effective in single-species infections. The authors show that susceptibility to the most common antibiotic used against the dominant pathogen P. aeruginosa is different when grown in this mixed community, and a mutant of this pathogen (lasR) that frequently occurs during infections alters this sensitivity. This study is significant for producing an experimental resource for the microbiology of CF, and it could be strengthened by more detailed measures of interactions between species and how the phenotypes produced by lasR alter species interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Multimodal brain age estimates relate to Alzheimer disease biomarkers and cognition in early stages: a cross-sectional observational study

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Peter R Millar
   2. Brian A Gordon
   3. Patrick H Luckett
   4. Tammie LS Benzinger
   5. Carlos Cruchaga
   6. Anne M Fagan
   7. Jason J Hassenstab
   8. Richard J Perrin
   9. Suzanne E Schindler
   10. Ricardo F Allegri
   11. Gregory S Day
   12. Martin R Farlow
   13. Hiroshi Mori
   14. Georg Nübling
   15. The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network
   16. Randall J Bateman
   17. John C Morris
   18. Beau M Ances

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This is a useful study exploring multi-modality brain age (structural plus resting state MRI) in people in the early stages or at risk of Alzheimer's disease. They found solid evidence that people with cognitive impairment had older-appearing brains and that older-appearing brains were related to Alzheimer's risk factors such as amyloid and tau deposition. They claim to show that the multi-modality brain age model is more accurate than a unimodal structural MRI model, though the evidence for that is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Differential axonal trafficking of Neuropeptide Y-, LAMP1-, and RAB7-tagged organelles in vivo

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Joris P Nassal
    2. Fiona H Murphy
    3. Ruud F Toonen
    4. Matthijs Verhage

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This is an important and fundamental, well-written and easily comprehended quantitative imaging study, analyzing the motion of endo-lysosomal compartments within axons in vivo using simultaneous multiphoton imaging in the mammalian brain. Taken together, this is a significant technical advance with interesting observations that substantively move the field forward.

    Reviewed by eLife