eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Cryo-sensitive aggregation triggers NLRP3 inflammasome assembly in cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Tadayoshi Karasawa
   2. Takanori Komada
   3. Naoya Yamada
   4. Emi Aizawa
   5. Yoshiko Mizushina
   6. Sachiko Watanabe
   7. Chintogtokh Baatarjav
   8. Takayoshi Matsumura
   9. Masafumi Takahashi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Karasawa and colleagues examine two gain-of-function mutations in NLRP3, which are known to cause cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes (auto-inflammatory diseases with different manifestations), and demonstrate that both mutations appear to result in cryo-sensitive aggregated foci when expressed in cells. This is a very impactful and extensive body of work that is of broad interest to the fields of inflammasomes and autoinflammatory diseases. Data presented support the conclusions, and the findings are translational for patients and applicable to our general understanding of inflammasome function. However, specific issues raised by the Reviewers should be addressed.

     (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

2. Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells improve survival from sepsis by boosting immunomodulatory cells

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Daniel E Morales-Mantilla
   2. Bailee Kain
   3. Duy Le
   4. Anthony R Flores
   5. Silke Paust
   6. Katherine Y King

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This preclinical study reports on a novel strategy for sepsis. Sepsis induced by Group A Streptococcus (GAS) in mice leads to depletion of bone marrow HSPCs and mortality and infusion of naive donor HSPCs lower mortality but has no effect on bacterial burden. This supports that HSPCs infusion might attenuate the detrimental immune response in sepsis warranting further investigation of this novel concept.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. JAMMIT Analysis Defines 2 Semi-Independent Immune Processes Common to 29 Solid Tumors

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Emory Zitello
   2. Michael Vo
   3. Shaoqiu Chen
   4. Scott Bowler
   5. Vedbar Khadka
   6. Thomas Wenska
   7. Peter Hoffmann
   8. Gordon Okimoto
   9. Youping Deng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study provides a sound and novel algorithm to analyze the massive cancer data and its findings greatly help inform novel cancer immunotherapy across various cancer types. Moreover, a 3-gene signature was established based upon Tc1, Tc17, and immune cold tumors to estimate the abundance of monocytic infiltrates that could potentially impact on the overall survival of cancer patients. It might be of great interest to the general audience of cancer biologists, immunologists and computational biologists.

     (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 reviewer remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Impaired astrocytic Ca2+ signaling in awake-behaving Alzheimer’s disease transgenic mice

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Knut Sindre Åbjørsbråten
   2. Gry HE Syverstad Skaaraas
   3. Céline Cunen
   4. Daniel M Bjørnstad
   5. Kristin M Gullestad Binder
   6. Laura Bojarskaite
   7. Vidar Jensen
   8. Lars NG Nilsson
   9. Shreyas B Rao
   10. Wannan Tang
   11. Gudmund Horn Hermansen
   12. Erlend A Nagelhus
   13. Ole Petter Ottersen
   14. Reidun Torp
   15. Rune Enger

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript is of broad interest to readers in the astrocyte and Alzheimer's Disease (AD) fields, and it utilizes state-of-the-art techniques to simultaneously record astrocyte calcium and animal behaviour. The work provides new insight into astrocyte calcium responses in AD, which has important implications for astrocyte pathophysiology. Overall, the data are of high quality and well analyzed.

     (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

5. Different brain systems support learning from received and avoided pain during human pain-avoidance learning

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Marieke Jepma
   2. Mathieu Roy
   3. Kiran Ramlakhan
   4. Monique van Velzen
   5. Albert Dahan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript is of particular interest to readers in the field of pain research. The identification of separate brain systems associated with learning from unexpected pain and learning from unexpected pain relief contributes to understanding of pain avoidance learning. The combination of behavioral data, neuroimaging and computational modeling provide support for many of the central claims of the paper, however weaknesses in the experimental design limit the support for the claims based on the results of the pharmacological manipulation.

     (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

6. Discovery of coordinately regulated pathways that provide innate protection against interbacterial antagonism

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. See-Yeun Ting
   2. Kaitlyn D LaCourse
   3. Hannah E Ledvina
   4. Rutan Zhang
   5. Matthew C Radey
   6. Hemantha D Kulasekara
   7. Rahul Somavanshi
   8. Savannah K Bertolli
   9. Larry A Gallagher
   10. Jennifer Kim
   11. Kelsi M Penewit
   12. Stephen J Salipante
   13. Libin Xu
   14. S Brook Peterson
   15. Joseph D Mougous

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Using a genome wide screen, the authors identify novel pathways that protect Pseudomonas aeruginosa against Type-6 secretion-mediated by other bacterial species. Importantly these pathways each protect against specific effectors. As an example, the authors further show that one factor Arc3B protects against phospholipase activity by antagonizing the production of lysophospholipids induced by phospholipase-type effectors. These findings uncover potentially conserved and unsuspected bacterial-defense pathways.

     (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, PREreview

7. Frequency- and spike-timing-dependent mitochondrial Ca2+ signaling regulates the metabolic rate and synaptic efficacy in cortical neurons

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Ohad Stoler
   2. Alexandra Stavsky
   3. Yana Khrapunsky
   4. Israel Melamed
   5. Grace Stutzmann
   6. Daniel Gitler
   7. Israel Sekler
   8. Ilya Fleidervish

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This work describes how mitochondrial calcium in different regions of pyramidal neurons is controlled by action potentials and synaptic input. The authors show that calcium is controlled in a highly non-linear manner by calcium entry into cells (through voltage-dependent calcium channels) during sequences of action potentials. A particularly interesting finding is the high degree of localization of calcium rises in individual mitochondria in dendrites, and the requirement for both synaptic input and back-propagating action potentials to produce prominent rises of calcium in dendritic mitochondria. The work provides fundamental new information about how calcium entry during action potentials and synaptic input controls mitochondrial function.

     (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

8. Protection of nascent DNA at stalled replication forks is mediated by phosphorylation of RIF1 intrinsically disordered region

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Sandhya Balasubramanian
   2. Matteo Andreani
   3. Júlia Goncalves Andrade
   4. Tannishtha Saha
   5. Devakumar Sundaravinayagam
   6. Javier Garzón
   7. Wenzhu Zhang
   8. Oliver Popp
   9. Shin-ichiro Hiraga
   10. Ali Rahjouei
   11. Daniel B Rosen
   12. Philipp Mertins
   13. Brian T Chait
   14. Anne D Donaldson
   15. Michela Di Virgilio

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     RIF1 is a protein of the DNA damage response with key roles on genome integrity: it prevents DSB resection and hence accurate HR repair, whilst protecting stalled forks from degradation under replication stress conditions. The authors' main finding is the identification of 3 residues in RIF1 protein, that can be phosphorylated in ATM/ATR-dependent manner. However, this phosphorylation is dispensable for the ability of RIF1 to limit double-strand break resection, but is required to counteract the degradation of stalled replication intermediates mediated by the DNA2 nuclease. Therefore, the manuscript suggests that the three sites can provide a potential switch between the two functions of RIF1. These findings will spark the interest of readers working in the DNA replication and repair fields. However, the actual mechanism by which blocking RIF1 phosphorylation prevents RIF1 function at replication forks still needs to be determined.

     (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

9. Repressing PTBP1 fails to convert reactive astrocytes to dopaminergic neurons in a 6-hydroxydopamine mouse model of Parkinson’s disease

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Weizhao Chen
   2. Qiongping Zheng
   3. Qiaoying Huang
   4. Shanshan Ma
   5. Mingtao Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This new work from Chen et al. reports on a critical question that is whether astrocytes can be converted in situ into dopaminergic neurons in response to the targeting of specific factors using, for example, gene therapy. This is a very strong, elegant and straightforward study. It is of broad interest and of high translational relevance.

     (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

10. Predictors of human-infective RNA virus discovery in the United States, China, and Africa, an ecological study

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Feifei Zhang
    2. Margo Chase-Topping
    3. Chuan-Guo Guo
    4. Mark EJ Woolhouse

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This study will be of interest to readers in the field of virus discovery. This study attempts to identify predictors of human-infective RNA virus discovery and predict high risk areas in a recent period in the United States, China and Africa using an ecological modelling framework. The study has potential to inform future discovery efforts for human-infective viruses . However it is not clear that key claims of the manuscript are currently fully supported.

      (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