eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Species clustering, climate effects, and introduced species in 5 million city trees across 63 US cities

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Dakota E McCoy
   2. Benjamin Goulet-Scott
   3. Weilin Meng
   4. Bulent Furkan Atahan
   5. Hana Kiros
   6. Misako Nishino
   7. John Kartesz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to urban foresters, ecologists, and planners. It provides an urban tree dataset across US cities that can be used to address questions on urban biodiversity and ecosystem services. It contains clear descriptions about the data processing and structures in general, but would need further clarifications about the sample completeness and representativeness of the data.

     (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. Altered excitatory and inhibitory neuronal subpopulation parameters are distinctly associated with tau and amyloid in Alzheimer’s disease

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Kamalini G Ranasinghe
   2. Parul Verma
   3. Chang Cai
   4. Xihe Xie
   5. Kiwamu Kudo
   6. Xiao Gao
   7. Hannah Lerner
   8. Danielle Mizuiri
   9. Amelia Strom
   10. Leonardo Iaccarino
   11. Renaud La Joie
   12. Bruce L Miller
   13. Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
   14. Katherine P Rankin
   15. William J Jagust
   16. Keith Vossel
   17. Gil D Rabinovici
   18. Ashish Raj
   19. Srikantan S Nagarajan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The authors explored the relationship between amyloid-beta and tau deposition and neural oscillations in Alzheimer's disease (AD) by using a computational neural mass model that can generate neurophysiological power spectra comparable to EEG- or MEG-like, macroscopic brain activity assessments. This analysis demonstrates the different, frequency-specific effects of amyloid-beta and tau proteins on excitation and inhibition, providing an integrated, multimodal explanation of the AD pathogenesis.

     (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

3. Domain fusion TLR2-4 enhances the autophagy-dependent clearance of Staphylococcus aureus in the genetic engineering goat

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Mengyao Wang
   2. Yu Qi
   3. Yutao Cao
   4. Xiaosheng Zhang
   5. Yongsheng Wang
   6. Qingyou Liu
   7. Jinlong Zhang
   8. Guangbin Zhou
   9. Yue Ai
   10. Shao Wei
   11. Linli Wang
   12. Guoshi Liu
   13. Zhengxing Lian
   14. Hongbing Han

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study is of interest to animal geneticists studying molecular breeding for infection resistance. The authors provide substantial new insight into the generation of a goat expressing domain fusion receptor TLR2-4, and clarify the mechanism to effectively eliminate S. aureus in macrophages from the gene-edited goat. Taken together, their findings suggest that TLR2-4 knock-in goats can serve as a good animal model for disease resistance breeding.

     (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

4. Structure of the IL-27 quaternary receptor signaling complex

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Nathanael A Caveney
   2. Caleb R Glassman
   3. Kevin M Jude
   4. Naotaka Tsutsumi
   5. K Christopher Garcia

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript is of interest to colleagues in immunity and signal transduction. Cytokines are small protein signaling molecules with a diverse range of activities in inflammation and immune system function. This manuscript reports the cryo-EM structure of the cytokine interleukin-27 (IL-27) bound to soluble domains of two receptor subunits, IL-27Rα and gp130. IL-27 is a composite cytokine consisting of the protein p28 bound to EBI3, which resembles soluble cytokine receptors such as the receptors for IL-6, IL-11 or CNTF. IL-27 signals predominantly via STAT1 and plays an important role in immune homeostasis. The data provide a detailed molecular view of how IL-27 binds to its receptor.

     (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. Unfolding and identification of membrane proteins in situ

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Nicola Galvanetto
   2. Zhongjie Ye
   3. Arin Marchesi
   4. Simone Mortal
   5. Sourav Maity
   6. Alessandro Laio
   7. Vincent Torre

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper presents a method to identify membrane proteins in native cell membranes based on a combination of single molecule AFM and an unsupervised clustering procedure to identify clusters of single-protein curves. This original approach represents a definitive step forward for AFM technology and methodology, which can generally only be used to characterize purified biomolecules of known identity. The work will be of interest to all students of membrane biology and especially membrane proteins.

     (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 names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Foveal vision anticipates defining features of eye movement targets

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Lisa M Kroell
   2. Martin Rolfs

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study measures the strength, timing, feature specificity and for the first time - spatial extent - of pre-saccadic processing of peripheral target information at the fovea, when fixation is not constrained. The authors conclude that saccade preparation causes feature-specific pre-saccadic visual enhancement restricted largely to the center of gaze. The manuscript is based on a rigorously curated dataset, it is well written and illustrated, and will be of potential interest to a broad readership of vision scientists, neuroscientists, and modelers. However, some key weaknesses in the interpretation of data were identified, which call into question the conclusion that the foveal enhancement observed can only be explained in terms of saccade preparation, thus weakening our ability to infer its mechanistic substrates.

     (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

7. Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) deletions as biomarkers of response to treatment of chronic active EBV

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Cristina Venturini
   2. Charlotte J. Houldcroft
   3. Arina Lazareva
   4. Fanny Wegner
   5. Sofia Morfopoulou
   6. Persis J. Amrolia
   7. Zainab Golwala
   8. Anupama Rao
   9. Stephen D. Marks
   10. Jacob Simmonds
   11. Tetsushi Yoshikawa
   12. Paul J. Farrell
   13. Jeffrey I. Cohen
   14. Austen J. Worth
   15. Judith Breuer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The author present a large amount of sequencing data of EBV present in a variety of individuals, including a few with the interesting and unusual disease manifestation known as Chronic Active EBV (CAEV). The data show that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the EBV genomes among people and overtime in some individuals, but the data do not reveal any particular mechanistic insights about the importance of this heterogeneity and the sample size is too small to warrant use of these deletions as therapeutic biomarkers.

     (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

8. Excitatory and inhibitory D-serine binding to the NMDA receptor

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Remy A Yovanno
   2. Tsung Han Chou
   3. Sarah J Brantley
   4. Hiro Furukawa
   5. Albert Y Lau

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Activation of NMDA receptors requires two co-agonists: Glutamate which binds to the GluN2 subunit and glycine/D-serine which binds to the GluN1 subunit. In the present manuscript, the authors address the interaction of D-serine, which is a less studied co-agonist than glycine, with the GluN1 and GluN2A subunits using molecular simulations as well as electrophysiology experiments. Surprisingly they find that D-serine interacts with the GluN2 subunit, further expanding our molecular understanding of NMDA receptor structure-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 names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Soluble MAC is primarily released from MAC-resistant bacteria that potently convert complement component C5

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Dennis J Doorduijn
   2. Marie V Lukassen
   3. Marije FL van 't Wout
   4. Vojtech Franc
   5. Maartje Ruyken
   6. Bart W Bardoel
   7. Albert JR Heck
   8. Suzan HM Rooijakkers

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The soluble membrane attack complex (sMAC) is generated from complement activation and contains the complement proteins C5b, C6, C7, C8, C9 together with the regulatory proteins clusterin and vitronectin. Despite intense interest in sMAC, the mechanisms regulating its formation remain poorly understood. In this manuscript the authors demonstrate that sMAC is formed when complement is activated on bacteria that are resistant to killing by MAC pores.

     (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. Monkeys exhibit human-like gaze biases in economic decisions

    This article has 2 authors:

    1. Shira M Lupkin
    2. Vincent B McGinty

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      Lupkin and McGinty studied gaze patterns in monkeys during value-based decision-making to determine whether relationships between gaze and choices that have been described in humans are also present in monkeys. Although previous literature has interpreted the effects of gaze on choice behavior to mean that attention to an option influences the decision that is made, a full understanding of the mechanisms underlying these biases will ultimately require data from non-human primates, making this an important and timely study. The authors use a clever task design to show that, as in humans, value-based choices are related to the amount of time spent viewing each option. The study is well-designed and the topic is significant to the field, but reviewers raised concerns about potential confounds and limitations not addressed by the current analyses.

      (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