eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Real time, in vivo measurement of neuronal and peripheral clocks in Drosophila melanogaster

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Peter S Johnstone
   2. Maite Ogueta
   3. Olga Akay
   4. Inan Top
   5. Sheyum Syed
   6. Ralf Stanewsky
   7. Deniz Top

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper presents a novel and potentially highly useful approach to monitor circadian rhythms in specific tissues. The elegant reporter that the authors have built has the potential to become an important tool for understanding how different body clocks respond to various inputs and genetic manipulations. The authors already apply it to show that different clocks appear to be responding differently to loss of signaling from a key circadian neuropeptide in Drosophila melanogaster. However, it is difficult to determine whether these results, as currently presented and analyzed, provide new insight into the relationship between brain and peripheral clocks. The work is of interest to the community of biologists studying biological rhythms.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

2. DNA methylome combined with chromosome cluster-oriented analysis provides an early signature for cutaneous melanoma aggressiveness

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Arnaud Carrier
   2. Cécile Desjobert
   3. Loic Ponger
   4. Laurence Lamant
   5. Matias Bustos
   6. Jorge Torres-Ferreira
   7. Rui Henrique
   8. Carmen Jeronimo
   9. Luisa Lanfrancone
   10. Audrey Delmas
   11. Gilles Favre
   12. Antoine Daunay
   13. Florence Busato
   14. Dave SB Hoon
   15. Jorg Tost
   16. Chantal Etievant
   17. Joëlle Riond
   18. Paola B Arimondo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Predicting if a tumour has aggressive or metastatic characteristics would be of great utility in the clinic as it would help patient stratification and management. In this manuscript, Carrier and collaborators derive a signature for melanoma aggressiveness relying on methylated regions of tumour and cell line genomes. The identification of a 4-gene methylation biomarker for melanoma aggressiveness and survival is an important contribution. This manuscript is of relevance to clinicians and melanoma researchers interested in biomarker research.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Mapping odorant sensitivities reveals a sparse but structured representation of olfactory chemical space by sensory input to the mouse olfactory bulb

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Shawn D Burton
   2. Audrey Brown
   3. Thomas P Eiting
   4. Isaac A Youngstrom
   5. Thomas C Rust
   6. Michael Schmuker
   7. Matt Wachowiak

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This is an important paper querying odor responses in the olfactory bulb at low concentrations. Classical studies have revealed a 'combinatorial code' for odorant recognition, with individual odorants represented by combinations of broadly tuned and low-affinity olfactory receptors. Here, the authors perform a large-scale analysis of odor responses across glomeruli and surprisingly observe that odorant receptors instead generally display remarkably narrow tuning profiles.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Higher-order unimodal olfactory sensory preconditioning in Drosophila

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Juan Martinez-Cervantes
   2. Prachi Shah
   3. Anna Phan
   4. Isaac Cervantes-Sandoval

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper shows that Drosophila can perform olfactory unimodal sensory preconditioning, an example of higher-order conditioning that may guide behaviour through inferred value. This is of conceptual significance for the brain, behavioural, and to some extent, the social sciences, because it shows that a conditioned response to a stimulus can occur even when the stimulus itself was never paired with punishment, for example.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Regulation of inflammation and protection against invasive pneumococcal infection by the long pentraxin PTX3

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Rémi Porte
   2. Rita Silva-Gomes
   3. Charlotte Theroude
   4. Raffaella Parente
   5. Fatemeh Asgari
   6. Marina Sironi
   7. Fabio Pasqualini
   8. Sonia Valentino
   9. Rosanna Asselta
   10. Camilla Recordati
   11. Marta Noemi Monari
   12. Andrea Doni
   13. Antonio Inforzato
   14. Carlos Rodriguez-Gallego
   15. Ignacio Obando
   16. Elena Colino
   17. Barbara Bottazzi
   18. Alberto Mantovani

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This submission represents a holistic approach to how pentraxin 3 (PTX3) modulates susceptibility to experimental infection by Streptococcus pneumoniae. The authors have built robust findings on the importance of PTX3 for the survival of mice and they have extensively investigated all different aspects of the mechanism of PTX3 protection. One main strength of the manuscript is its usage of bone marrow chimeras in addition to total as well as tissue-specific mouse strains that support their claims.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

6. On the flexibility of the cellular amination network in E coli

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Helena Schulz-Mirbach
   2. Alexandra Müller
   3. Tong Wu
   4. Pascal Pfister
   5. Selçuk Aslan
   6. Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski
   7. Tobias J Erb
   8. Arren Bar-Even
   9. Steffen N Lindner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     In this paper, the authors demonstrate that a reversible amination network that allows nitrogen transfer via transaminases for synthesis of several amino acids can be constructed in laboratory strains through clever and carefully designed experiments. As a result, this work should be of interest to microbiologists, biochemists, synthetic biologists, and biotechnologists.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Manganese is a physiologically relevant TORC1 activator in yeast and mammals

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Raffaele Nicastro
   2. Hélène Gaillard
   3. Laura Zarzuela
   4. Marie-Pierre Péli-Gulli
   5. Elisabet Fernández-García
   6. Mercedes Tomé
   7. Néstor García-Rodríguez
   8. Raúl V Durán
   9. Claudio De Virgilio
   10. Ralf Erik Wellinger

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Nicastro et al. uncover a new input for the central metabolic regulator TOR complex 1 (TORC1) , namely manganese (Mn) levels, in budding yeast and they show that this dependence on Mn is conserved in humans. TORC1 is a central coordinator of multiple inputs to guide cellular decisions of catabolism vs anabolism, and information on an additional way to modulate its activity will be highly influential in both basic cell biology as well as therapeutic research.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Independent regulation of mitochondrial DNA quantity and quality in Caenorhabditis elegans primordial germ cells

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Aaron ZA Schwartz
   2. Nikita Tsyba
   3. Yusuff Abdu
   4. Maulik R Patel
   5. Jeremy Nance

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Mitochondria have their own DNA, which is much more likely to gain mutation (due to error-prone DNA polymerase). It is widely appreciated that there are quality control mechanisms such that functional mitochondria are passed from one generation to the next. The proposed mechanisms include a passive mechanism (generation of the bottleneck) as well as an active mechanism (selective removal of non-functional mitochondria), but the processes are not fully understood. This manuscript presents fascinating observations as to how C. elegans germline may remove mitochondria by creating bottlenecks as well as selectively removing non-functional mitochondria. Building upon the authors' previous finding that the C. elegans primordial germ cells (PGCs) shed much of cytoplasm during embryogenesis through 'cannibalism', they now describe that a bulk of mitochondria are removed from PGCs through this process.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Sonic hedgehog-dependent recruitment of GABAergic interneurons into the developing visual thalamus

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Rachana Deven Somaiya
   2. Katelyn Stebbins
   3. Ellen C Gingrich
   4. Hehuang Xie
   5. John N Campbell
   6. A Denise R Garcia
   7. Michael A Fox

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper proposes a novel mechanism used by the visual system to recruit interneurons into the visual thalamus. The primary claims that retinal ganglion cell axons secrete Shh in the visual thalamus that induces FGF15 expression by astrocytes, that then attract interneurons are sound. Because Shh signaling, interneuron migration, and astrocyte functions are studied by a large number of neuroscientists this study will have a high impact on the field.

     (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Tethering distinct molecular profiles of single cells by their lineage histories to investigate sources of cell state heterogeneity

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Anna Minkina
    2. Junyue Cao
    3. Jay Shendure

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      The authors use single-cell RNA-sequencing, single-cell ATAC-sequencing, a CRISPR-based lineage tracing system, and a novel computational pipeline to characterize heritable expression changes. Aspects of this work were found to be both impactful and technically sound, but there is a concern with the scalability/generalizability of the approach, the use of the single cell ATAC-sequencing data, and some technical aspects of the computational pipeline. This work will appeal to groups working on lineage tracing and gene regulation.

      (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

    Reviewed by eLife