eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. THINGS-data, a multimodal collection of large-scale datasets for investigating object representations in human brain and behavior

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Martin N Hebart
   2. Oliver Contier
   3. Lina Teichmann
   4. Adam H Rockter
   5. Charles Y Zheng
   6. Alexis Kidder
   7. Anna Corriveau
   8. Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam
   9. Chris I Baker

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Hebart et al., present a new massive multi-model dataset to support the study of visual object representation, including data measured from functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, and behavioral similarity judgments. The general, condition-rich design, conducted over a thoughtfully curated and sampled set of object concepts will be highly valuable to the cognitive/computational/neuroscience community, yielding data that will be amenable to many empirical questions beyond the field of visual object recognition. The dataset is accompanied by quality control evaluations as well as examples of analyses that the community can re-run and further explore for building new hypotheses that can be tested with such a rich dataset.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. High genetic diversity in the pelagic deep-sea fauna of the Atacama Trench revealed by environmental DNA

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Salvador Ramírez-Flandes
   2. Carolina E. González
   3. Montserrat Aldunate
   4. Julie Poulain
   5. Patrick Wincker
   6. Ronnie N. Glud
   7. Rubén Escribano
   8. Sophie Arnaud Haond
   9. Osvaldo Ulloa

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript from Ramírez-Flandes will be of interest to marine biologists, deep ocean ecologists, conservation biologists, and biogeographers. At times, the comparison of merely a pair of samples or sampling locales can substantially widen our view of biological and ecological systems and processes. In the case of this study, the pattern of metazoan diversity from eDNA samples from across the water columns in comparable series from two deep trench systems (to below 8000 m) is markedly different, including evidence of substantial biological diversity deep in the Atacama Trench (to a much greater extent than observed in the Kermadec Trench), contradicting existing paradigms about biodiversity potential in abyssal-hadal regions.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Trisomy 21 induces pericentrosomal crowding delaying primary ciliogenesis and mouse cerebellar development

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Cayla E Jewett
   2. Bailey L McCurdy
   3. Eileen T O'Toole
   4. Alexander J Stemm-Wolf
   5. Katherine S Given
   6. Carrie H Lin
   7. Valerie Olsen
   8. Whitney Martin
   9. Laura Reinholdt
   10. Joaquín M Espinosa
   11. Kelly D Sullivan
   12. Wendy B Macklin
   13. Rytis Prekeris
   14. Chad G Pearson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work investigates the cellular and cerebellar origins of trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) phenotypes. One human chromosome 21 gene is Pericentrin (PCNT), encoding a component of the centrosome. The authors use several models with 3 or 4 copies of human chromosome 21 (or mouse equivalents) to reveal how increasing PCNT gene dosage alters ciliogenesis and ciliary signaling.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. An automated feeding system for the African killifish reveals the impact of diet on lifespan and allows scalable assessment of associative learning

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Andrew McKay
   2. Emma K Costa
   3. Jingxun Chen
   4. Chi-Kuo Hu
   5. Xiaoshan Chen
   6. Claire N Bedbrook
   7. Rishad C Khondker
   8. Mike Thielvoldt
   9. Param Priya Singh
   10. Tony Wyss-Coray
   11. Anne Brunet

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     McKay, et al. describe development of a new wireless, network-enabled automated feeder system with which diet amount and schedule can be controlled across individually housed killifish. The system is constructed using open-source components and software and is amenable to manufacture by individual research groups and is highly scalable. The authors then use this system to explore dietary restriction effects on killifish lifespan and to develop an associative learning assay, two important goals in the KF /longevity field. The authors demonstrate that precise control of food allows automated investigation of lifespan extension under calorie restriction conditions. Secondly, they show an exciting modification of the system that involves only addition of a simple LED light. This modification allows use of the system in an associative learning / conditioning paradigm. Finally, using this paradigm, they demonstrate an age-dependent decline in learning.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Cell circuits between leukemic cells and mesenchymal stem cells block lymphopoiesis by activating lymphotoxin beta receptor signaling

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Xing Feng
   2. Ruifeng Sun
   3. Moonyoung Lee
   4. Xinyue Chen
   5. Shangqin Guo
   6. Huimin Geng
   7. Marcus Müschen
   8. Jungmin Choi
   9. Joao Pedro Pereira

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study describes a previously unrecognized positive feedback loop between leukemic cells and stromal cells impeding normal hematopoiesis mediated by lymphotoxin produced by cancer cells and its receptor expressed in stromal cells. These valuable findings will guide future research in both basic and clinical medicine. However, additional experimental evidence including more comparator groups would have further substantiated the authors' conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Opposite polarity programs regulate asymmetric subsidiary cell divisions in grasses

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Dan Zhang
   2. Roxane P Spiegelhalder
   3. Emily B Abrash
   4. Tiago DG Nunes
   5. Inés Hidalgo
   6. M Ximena Anleu Gil
   7. Barbara Jesenofsky
   8. Heike Lindner
   9. Dominique C Bergmann
   10. Michael T Raissig

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript characterizes the localization and function of two proteins promoting division asymmetry in developing stomata of the grass Brachypodium distachyon. The authors demonstrate that the opposing polarity domains of these proteins are linked to cell division orientation. While both proteins have been studied previously in other systems, there was no prior evidence of cooperative functions in a single cell type, as shown here. With further clarification of some of the localization findings, this study will be of strong interest to plant cell biologists and those interested in asymmetric cell division generally.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. The RAM signaling pathway links morphology, thermotolerance, and CO2 tolerance in the global fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Benjamin J Chadwick
   2. Tuyetnhu Pham
   3. Xiaofeng Xie
   4. Laura C Ristow
   5. Damian J Krysan
   6. Xiaorong Lin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides compelling evidence for the involvement of RAM pathway in the survival of C. neoformans in high CO2 concentrations. The work is important to understand how this fungus adapts to the high CO2 concentrations in host tissues. The experimental approach combines genetic and biochemical approaches to explore a complex topic that is of essential for cryptococcal pathogenesis.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Community diversity is associated with intra-species genetic diversity and gene loss in the human gut microbiome

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Naïma Jesse Madi
   2. Daisy Chen
   3. Richard Wolff
   4. B Jesse Shapiro
   5. Nandita R Garud

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors re-analyzed a previously published dataset and identify patterns suggestive of increased bacterial biodiversity in the gut may creating new niches that lead to gene loss in a focal species and promote generation of more diversity. Two limitations are (i) that sequencing depth may not be sufficient to analyze strain-level diversity and (ii) that the evidence is exclusively based on correlations, and the observed patterns could also be explained by other eco-evolutionary processes. The claims should be supported by a more detailed analysis, and alternative hypotheses that the results do not fully exclude should be discussed. Understanding drivers of diversity in natural microbial communities is an important question that is of central interest to biomedically oriented microbiome scientists, microbial ecologists and evolutionary biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Sparse dimensionality reduction approaches in Mendelian randomisation with highly correlated exposures

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Vasileios Karageorgiou
   2. Dipender Gill
   3. Jack Bowden
   4. Verena Zuber

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This paper is of broad interest to infer the causal effect of exposures on outcomes. It proposed an interesting idea for the identification of risk factors amongst highly correlated traits in a Mendelian randomization paradigm. The intuition for this method is clearly presented. However, critical details about implementation are missing and its application is not sufficiently demonstrated in the current form.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Single spikes drive sequential propagation and routing of activity in a cortical network

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Juan Luis Riquelme
    2. Mike Hemberger
    3. Gilles Laurent
    4. Julijana Gjorgjieva

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This manuscript is relevant to experimental and theoretical neuroscientists interested in the trade-off between chaos and reliability in the brain, and may also pique the interest of the machine learning community, particularly those seeking to understand the computational capacity of recurrent neural networks. The findings are valuable, with practical and theoretical implications for this subfield. Using a spiking neural network model firmly anchored in experimental data from the turtle brain, the authors examine the reliability and flexibility of spike train sequences and determine the differential roles of strong and weak connections. The results show clearly that strong but sparse connections in a sub-network can produce a highly reliable response to single spikes, with reliability and multiplexing across sub-networks controlled by weak connectivity. The strength of evidence for the claims is convincing, using appropriate and validated methodology in line with current state-of-the-art.

    Reviewed by eLife