eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Ocean acidification increases susceptibility to sub-zero air temperatures in ecosystem engineers and limits poleward range shifts

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Jakob Thyrring
   2. Colin D Macleod
   3. Katie E Marshall
   4. Jessica Kennedy
   5. Réjean Tremblay
   6. Christopher DG Harley

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper is of broad interest to biologists and climate modelers that study the impact of environmental stress (especially multiple stressors) on marine life. The authors show that exposure to low pH (ocean acidification) decreases the ability of two mussel species to survive freezing stress. The authors measure multiple biochemical parameters to try and identify the mechanisms underlying the change in freeze tolerance, but future work will be needed to resolve the underlying mechanism in detail.

     (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. A model-based analysis of the health impacts of COVID-19 disruptions to primary cervical screening by time since last screen for current and future disruptions

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Emily A Burger
   2. Inge MCM de Kok
   3. James F O'Mahony
   4. Matejka Rebolj
   5. Erik EL Jansen
   6. Daniel D de Bondt
   7. James Killen
   8. Sharon J Hanley
   9. Alejandra Castanon
   10. Mary Caroline Regan
   11. Jane J Kim
   12. Karen Canfell
   13. Megan A Smith

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper describes the use of three well-established mathematical models of cervical cancer to estimate the impact of COVID-19 related-delays in screening access on cervical cancer incidence and delays in diagnosis. Consistent with previous work and the known biology of cervical cancers, the findings that short delays have relatively small effects on population-level cervical cancer risk are reassuring overall, but the impact of screening interval and screening test performance suggest that existing disparities related to screening access may be exacerbated. These results should be useful for policy makers in planning responses to future pandemics or other sources of sudden restriction of screening availability.

     (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. A stochastic model of hippocampal synaptic plasticity with geometrical readout of enzyme dynamics

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Yuri Elias Rodrigues
   2. Cezar M Tigaret
   3. Hélène Marie
   4. Cian O'Donnell
   5. Romain Veltz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper proposes a computational model that combines biologically detailed elements with more simplified components to provide a comprehensive model of synaptic plasticity. It includes the stochastic character of many of the biophysical processes and introduces a new way to readout the plasticity cascade. It is evaluated against impressively many published experimental studies of hippocampal plasticity. The paper should be of interest not only to computational neuroscience but also to the synaptic neuroscience community but will benefit from a clearer description of assumptions and weaknesses, and a clearer separation of the essential elements in this model from the less critical elements.

     (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

4. Evolutionary gain and loss of a plant pattern-recognition receptor for HAMP recognition

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Simon Snoeck
   2. Bradley W Abramson
   3. Anthony GK Garcia
   4. Ashley N Egan
   5. Todd P Michael
   6. Adam D Steinbrenner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript, of interest to those studying the evolution of immunity, investigates the evolutionary history of a recently described herbivore-associated molecular pattern (HAMP) receptor, INR, which perceives the caterpillar-derived peptide HAMP, In11. The authors compare INR homologs to identify evolutionarily conserved residues and use chimeric fusion proteins to investigate specificity. The findings presented are valuable and supported by convincing experiments and analysis.

     (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

5. Brain atlas for glycoprotein hormone receptors at single-transcript level

   This article has 26 authors:

   1. Vitaly Ryu
   2. Anisa Gumerova
   3. Funda Korkmaz
   4. Seong Su Kang
   5. Pavel Katsel
   6. Sari Miyashita
   7. Hasni Kannangara
   8. Liam Cullen
   9. Pokman Chan
   10. TanChun Kuo
   11. Ashley Padilla
   12. Farhath Sultana
   13. Soleil A Wizman
   14. Natan Kramskiy
   15. Samir Zaidi
   16. Se-Min Kim
   17. Maria I New
   18. Clifford J Rosen
   19. Ki A Goosens
   20. Tal Frolinger
   21. Vahram Haroutunian
   22. Keqiang Ye
   23. Daria Lizneva
   24. Terry F Davies
   25. Tony Yuen
   26. Mone Zaidi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be very interesting to the large class of neuroscientists who study functional roles of glycoprotein hormone receptors in the central nervous system. It provides detailed tissue-selective gene and receptor distributions of the three anterior pituitary hormones, and thus likely facilitates further relevant studies by other scientists.

     (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

6. An international observational study to assess the impact of the Omicron variant emergence on the clinical epidemiology of COVID-19 in hospitalised patients

   This article has 47 authors:

   1. Bronner P Gonçalves
   2. Matthew Hall
   3. Waasila Jassat
   4. Valeria Balan
   5. Srinivas Murthy
   6. Christiana Kartsonaki
   7. Malcolm G Semple
   8. Amanda Rojek
   9. Joaquín Baruch
   10. Luis Felipe Reyes
   11. Abhishek Dasgupta
   12. Jake Dunning
   13. Barbara Wanjiru Citarella
   14. Mark Pritchard
   15. Alejandro Martín-Quiros
   16. Uluhan Sili
   17. J Kenneth Baillie
   18. Diptesh Aryal
   19. Yaseen Arabi
   20. Aasiyah Rashan
   21. Andrea Angheben
   22. Janice Caoili
   23. François Martin Carrier
   24. Ewen M Harrison
   25. Joan Gómez-Junyent
   26. Claudia Figueiredo-Mello
   27. James Joshua Douglas
   28. Mohd Basri Mat Nor
   29. Yock Ping Chow
   30. Xin Ci Wong
   31. Silvia Bertagnolio
   32. Soe Soe Thwin
   33. Anca Streinu-Cercel
   34. Leonardo Salazar
   35. Asgar Rishu
   36. Rajavardhan Rangappa
   37. David SY Ong
   38. Madiha Hashmi
   39. Gail Carson
   40. Janet Diaz
   41. Rob Fowler
   42. Moritz UG Kraemer
   43. Evert-Jan Wils
   44. Peter Horby
   45. Laura Merson
   46. Piero L Olliaro
   47. ISARIC Clinical Characterisation Group

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript compares COVID-19 mortality during the pre-Omicron and Omicron emergence periods in several countries and finds evidence suggesting the Omicron variant was associated with lower mortality than previous dominant variants. This paper will be of interest to infectious disease scientists both for its content and its methods, as it validates that population-level variant frequency can be a good proxy for individual-level variant data to derive insights on variant biology with population 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. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Evolution of neural activity in circuits bridging sensory and abstract knowledge

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Francesca Mastrogiuseppe
   2. Naoki Hiratani
   3. Peter Latham

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The findings of the paper are of interest to scientists studying the learning of abstract representations. It provides insights into how feedforward networks evolve during a process of learning to map stimuli onto abstract classes via gradient descent. The results are appealing and the analyses thorough. As well, the paper makes some experimental predictions. It could benefit from a deeper discussion on how the findings may generalize to biologically more realistic networks and tasks.

     (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

8. Germline/soma distinction in Drosophila embryos requires regulators of zygotic genome activation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Megan M Colonnetta
   2. Paul Schedl
   3. Girish Deshpande

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The early differentiation of germ cells, those that will form egg and sperm, is a critical and nearly universal step in animal development. This paper reveals new layers of molecular and cellular regulation that control this process in the fly, and as such be of broad interest to cell and developmental biologists, especially those interested in critical cell fate decisions. The paper contains a wealth of experimental data demonstrating that processes generally thought to be restricted to somatic cells alter the differentiation of germ cells, but provides only limited functional interpretation of the observed phenotypes.

     (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. Distinct neurexin-cerebellin complexes control AMPA- and NMDA-receptor responses in a circuit-dependent manner

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jinye Dai
   2. Kif Liakath-Ali
   3. Samantha Rose Golf
   4. Thomas C Südhof

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript is of broad interest to neuroscientists studying mechanisms regulating synapse formation and maintenance. Following up on the previous work by the authors on trans-synaptic signaling complexes involving neurexins and cerebellins, this study shows that the basic framework of the complexes operates broadly across different synapses in the brain albeit with subtle differences. The experiments are carefully executed, while some key conclusions could be better supported by additional 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

10. Normative decision rules in changing environments

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Nicholas W Barendregt
    2. Joshua I Gold
    3. Krešimir Josić
    4. Zachary P Kilpatrick

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This paper investigates scenarios in which the environment changes during the course of a decision, and shows that optimal behavior can be highly complex. It will be of broad interest to researchers in psychology, behavioural economics, and neuroscience interested in decision-making in real-world tasks. It also awaits detailed empirical testing.

      (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