eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Transcriptional regulation of cyclophilin D by BMP/Smad signaling and its role in osteogenic differentiation

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Rubens Sautchuk
   2. Brianna H Kalicharan
   3. Katherine Escalera-Rivera
   4. Jennifer H Jonason
   5. George A Porter
   6. Hani A Awad
   7. Roman A Eliseev

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper is of potential interest to investigators in the bone field. The study provides evidence of CypD regulation of osteoblast differentiation and offers new insights into it's transcriptional regulation. Overall, although the findings are compelling and have the potential to advance the field, several conclusions require additional data or clarification and there are some missed opportunities to strengthen the manuscript.

     (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 #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Short-term plasticity in the human visual thalamus

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Jan W Kurzawski
   2. Claudia Lunghi
   3. Laura Biagi
   4. Michela Tosetti
   5. Maria Concetta Morrone
   6. Paola Binda

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to the large class of neuroscientists who investigate brain plasticity. It identifies short-term plasticity in a subcortical region, the ventral division of the pulvinar, following monocular deprivation in adult humans. The work is believed to extend our research focus on the topic of ocular dominance plasticity from mainly the cortex to a larger brain network including the subcortical stages of visual processing. This is an intriguing possibility, but further evidence is required to fully support the 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. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition proceeds through directional destabilization of multidimensional attractor

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Weikang Wang
   2. Dante Poe
   3. Yaxuan Yang
   4. Thomas Hyatt
   5. Jianhua Xing

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This is a multifaceted study of the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) in live cells. EMT is relevant for cancer, development, and wound healing. The authors were able to discern two possible cell transition path categories without multi-color labeling or other advanced experimental approaches, which could be impactful. The study draws on a wide range of experimental, data science, and modelling tools and techniques.

     (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, Reviewer #2 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Eco-evolutionary dynamics modulate plant responses to global change depending on plant diversity and species identity

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Peter Dietrich
   2. Jens Schumacher
   3. Nico Eisenhauer
   4. Christiane Roscher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The overarching goal of this study was to identify eco-evolutionary feedbacks between plant community diversity and global change drivers. The authors aimed to test the hypothesis that a decline in species richness due to various global change drivers selects for traits that will make species more vulnerable to the further effects of these drivers, amplifying thus the initial diversity decline. This research is of prime importance to botanists, plant ecologists and ecosystem ecologists wanting to understand the effects of global change on plant diversity and productivity.

     (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. Fluorescence activation mechanism and imaging of drug permeation with new sensors for smoking-cessation ligands

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Aaron L Nichols
   2. Zack Blumenfeld
   3. Chengcheng Fan
   4. Laura Luebbert
   5. Annet EM Blom
   6. Bruce N Cohen
   7. Jonathan S Marvin
   8. Philip M Borden
   9. Charlene H Kim
   10. Anand K Muthusamy
   11. Amol V Shivange
   12. Hailey J Knox
   13. Hugo Rego Campello
   14. Jonathan H Wang
   15. Dennis A Dougherty
   16. Loren L Looger
   17. Timothy Gallagher
   18. Douglas C Rees
   19. Henry A Lester

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Nichols et al. developed and characterized the first fluorescent sensors for several nicotinic receptor partial agonists relevant to smoking cessation. It is potentially a major advance for the field. They leveraged crystallography to understand the mechanism by which the ligands enhance fluorescence, then characterized top sensors for sensitivity, selectivity, and kinetics, and their utility in plasma membrane and ER sensing in neurons and cell lines. The tools developed by this team will enable investigators to track nicotinic receptor partial agonists in different subcellular compartments with relatively fast time resolution.

     (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, Reviewer #2 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Differential regulation of cranial and cardiac neural crest by serum response factor and its cofactors

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Colin J Dinsmore
   2. Philippe Soriano

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This carefully executed study suggests new mechanisms by which Serum Response Factor (Srf) regulates transcription. The manuscript reports the effects that loss of Srf function has on different neural crest lineages in the mouse. The authors conclude that within neural crest, the main function of Srf is in the cardiac neural crest lineage where it regulates cytoskeletal genes.

     (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

7. Volume growth in animal cells is cell cycle dependent and shows additive fluctuations

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Clotilde Cadart
   2. Larisa Venkova
   3. Matthieu Piel
   4. Marco Cosentino Lagomarsino

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The regulation of cell growth is crucial for our understanding of how cells control their size as well as how they balance cell mass and volume. While recent studies carefully measured single cell mass trajectories during the cell cycle, revealing complex growth patterns, the volume growth patterns of animal cells are poorly understood. In this interesting study, Cadart et al. now present high-precision measurements of 1700 HeLa cell growth trajectories and offering evidence for the mechanisms that regulate volume growth-rate fluctuations. This is an important demonstration of cell autonomous volume 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

8. Activation of transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 is involved in pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Yan Zou
   2. Miaomiao Zhang
   3. Qiongfeng Wu
   4. Ning Zhao
   5. Minwei Chen
   6. Cui Yang
   7. Yimei Du
   8. Bing Han

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study investigated the role of transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) in pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy. The expression of TPRV4 is increased in both heart failure and pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy models. The TRPV4 deletion or inhibition ameliorated the hypertrophy cardiac pathology. The authors propose that TRPV4 is a potential therapeutic target for cardiac hypertrophy.

     (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 #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Mapping brain-wide excitatory projectome of primate prefrontal cortex at submicron resolution and comparison with diffusion tractography

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Mingchao Yan
   2. Wenwen Yu
   3. Qian Lv
   4. Qiming Lv
   5. Tingting Bo
   6. Xiaoyu Chen
   7. Yilin Liu
   8. Yafeng Zhan
   9. Shengyao Yan
   10. Xiangyu Shen
   11. Baofeng Yang
   12. Qiming Hu
   13. Jiangli Yu
   14. Zilong Qiu
   15. Yuanjing Feng
   16. Xiao-Yong Zhang
   17. He Wang
   18. Fuqiang Xu
   19. Zheng Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of broad interest to readers who study anatomical connections of the brain. It demonstrates the efficacy of a cutting-edge viral tracing technique in mapping excitatory projections in macaque monkeys. The work describes the generation of a projectome from the macaque vlPFC cortex across the rest of the brain using AAV2/9-CaMKIIa-Tau-GFP labeling and imaging with high-throughput serial two-photon tomography. The comparison with imaging techniques available in humans (diffusion tractography) will also be of interest to research in human brain anatomy.

     (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

10. Environmentally sensitive hotspots in the methylome of the early human embryo

    This article has 16 authors:

    1. Matt J Silver
    2. Ayden Saffari
    3. Noah J Kessler
    4. Gririraj R Chandak
    5. Caroline HD Fall
    6. Prachand Issarapu
    7. Akshay Dedaniya
    8. Modupeh Betts
    9. Sophie E Moore
    10. Michael N Routledge
    11. Zdenko Herceg
    12. Cyrille Cuenin
    13. Maria Derakhshan
    14. Philip T James
    15. David Monk
    16. Andrew M Prentice

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This manuscript will be of interest to researchers interested in the influence of prenatal exposures on infant health. The authors investigate the impact of the season of conception on child DNA methylation levels in two independent cohorts from the Gambia and identify a set of CpGs that are tightly regulated during development. The data support the main conclusions of the manuscript, but some of the analyses could be improved (i.e. possible presence of residual confounding). There is also limited evidence for the functional importance of the observed associations.

      (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