eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Mycobacterial metallophosphatase MmpE acts as a nucleomodulin to regulate host gene expression and promote intracellular survival

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Liu Chen
   2. Baojie Duan
   3. Qiang Jiang
   4. Yifan Wang
   5. Yingyu Chen
   6. Lei Zhang
   7. Aizhen Guo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The work convincingly demonstrates the role of the mycobacterial secreted effector protein MmpE, which translocates to the host nucleus and exhibits phosphatase activity. The study is particularly valuable in showing that both the nuclear localization signal sequences and residues critical for phosphatase function are essential for host gene regulation, lysosomal biogenesis, and intracellular survival. Future studies will be needed to explore additional host pathways modulated by MmpE, particularly in the context of infection with a fully virulent Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Decision-making components and times revealed by the single-trial electroencephalogram

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Gabriel Weindel
   2. Jelmer P Borst
   3. Leendert van Maanen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Weindel et al examine behavioural and EEG data in an innovative contrast comparison paradigm where they vary mean contrast widely while keeping contrast difference constant. As intended, this allowed an elegant decomposition of processing stages: while sensory encoding shortened with increasing contrast in keeping with Pieron's law, the period of decision formation lengthened, in keeping with Fechner's law, which was applied to drift rates in a diffusion model of that period. This is an important demonstration of how these two laws apply in concert, to two distinct processing levels, and the multivariate topography parsing, mixed effect models and diffusion models are convincing.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. iGABASnFR2 is an improved genetically encoded protein sensor of GABA

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Ilya Kolb
   2. Jeremy P Hasseman
   3. Akihiro Matsumoto
   4. Thomas P Jensen
   5. Olga Kopach
   6. Benjamin J Arthur
   7. Yan Zhang
   8. Arthur Tsang
   9. Daniel Reep
   10. Getahun Tsegaye
   11. Jihong Zheng
   12. Ronak H Patel
   13. Loren L Looger
   14. Jonathan S Marvin
   15. Wyatt L Korff
   16. Dmitri A Rusakov
   17. Keisuke Yonehara
   18. GENIE Project Team
   19. Glenn C Turner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript reports the development and characterization of iGABASnFR2, a genetically encoded GABA sensor that demonstrates substantially improved performance compared to its predecessor, iGABASnFR1. The work is comprehensive and methodologically rigorous, combining high-throughput mutagenesis, functional screening, structural analysis, biophysical characterization, and in vivo validation. The significance of the findings is fundamental, and the supporting evidence is compelling. iGABASnFR2 represents a notable advance in GABA sensor engineering, enabling enhanced imaging of GABA transmission both in brain slices and in vivo, and constitutes a timely, technically robust addition to the molecular toolkit for neuroscience research.

   Reviewed by eLife, PREreview

4. Modality-Agnostic Decoding of Vision and Language from fMRI

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Mitja Nikolaus
   2. Milad Mozafari
   3. Isabelle Berry
   4. Nicholas Asher
   5. Leila Reddy
   6. Rufin VanRullen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study introduces a valuable dataset for investigating the relationship between vision and language in the brain. The authors provide convincing evidence that decoders trained on brain responses to both images and captions outperform those trained on responses to a single modality. The dataset and decoder results will be of interest to communities studying brain and machine decoding.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. A forebrain hub for cautious actions via the midbrain

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Ji Zhou
   2. Muhammad Sarmad Sajid
   3. Sebastian Hormigo
   4. Manuel A Castro-Alamancos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses fiber photometry, implantable lenses, and optogenetics, to show that a subset of subthalamic nucleus neurons are active during movement, and that active but not passive avoidance depends in part on STN projections to substantia nigra. The strength of the evidence for these claims is solid and this paper may be of interest to basic and applied behavioural neuroscientists working on movement or avoidance.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Pathogenic O-GlcNAc dyshomeostasis is associated with cortical malformations and hyperactivity

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Florence Authier
   2. Asad Jan
   3. Islam Faress
   4. Christian Stald Skoven
   5. Iria Esperon-Abril
   6. Shagana Tharmakulasingam Balasubramaniam
   7. Kévin-Sébastien Coquelin
   8. Jens R Nyengaard
   9. Carsten Scavenius
   10. Benedetta Attianese
   11. Oscar G Sevillano-Quispe
   12. Simon Fristed Eskildsen
   13. Jesper Skovhus Thomsen
   14. Brian Hansen
   15. Daan MF van Aalten

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study that takes a key step towards understanding developmental disorders linked to mutations in the O-GlcNAc transferase enzyme by generating a mouse model harboring the C921Y mutation. While the mechanisms remain open, the study thoroughly examines behavioral and anatomical differences in these mice and provides convincing evidence for behavioral hyperactivity and learning/memory deficits, as well as phenotypic differences in skull and brain formation. This study will be of interest to those studying neurodevelopmental disorders and associated mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Inferring variant-specific effective reproduction numbers from combined case and sequencing data

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Marlin D Figgins
   2. Trevor Bedford

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides new important insights concerning pathogen variant-specific reproduction parameters from molecular sequencing and case finding. The methods for inferring which variants will likely emerge in subsequent epidemic cycles are solid. This article is of broad interest to infectious disease epidemiology researchers and mathematical modellers of the COVID-19 pandemic.

   Reviewed by eLife, ScreenIT

8. Mood computational mechanisms underlying increased risk behavior in adolescent suicidal patients

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Zhihao Wang
   2. Tian Nan
   3. Fengmei Lu
   4. Yue Yu
   5. Xiao Cai
   6. Zongling He
   7. Yuejia Luo
   8. Ting Wang
   9. Bastien Blain

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combined careful computational modeling, a large patient sample, and replication in an independent general population sample to provide convincing evidence in support of a computational account of a difference in risk-taking between people who have attempted suicide and those who have not. It is proposed that this difference reflects a general change in the approach to risky (high-reward) options and a lower emotional response to certain rewards. While the findings advance our understanding of cognitive mechanisms at the group level, the observation that computational phenotype is predictive of suicidal behavior only in the clinical sample and not in the online sample limits its applicability for individual prediction, early detection and prevention of suicidality.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. An increase of NPY1 expression leads to inhibitory phosphorylation of PIN-FORMED (PIN) proteins and suppression of pinoid (pid) null mutants

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Michael Mudgett
   2. Zhouxin Shen
   3. Ruofan Kang
   4. Xinhua Dai
   5. Steven P Briggs
   6. Yunde Zhao

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study concerns a highly interesting and biologically relevant topic, the regulation of the PIN auxin transporter, which is of broad interest to the plant biology community. The authors propose NPY1 to act downstream of PID in auxin-mediated development by modulating PIN phosphorylation, which, if experimentally solidified, would expand our understanding of PIN regulation. While the genetic evidence is solid, the mechanistic role of NPY1 and the functional relevance of phosphorylated PIN residues are still uncertain. There are also concerns regarding experimental rigor and methodological transparency.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Listening to the room: disrupting activity of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex impairs learning of room acoustics in human listeners

    This article has 6 authors:

    1. Heivet Hernández-Pérez
    2. Jason Mikiel-Hunter
    3. James Traer
    4. Jessica JM Monaghan
    5. Paul F Sowman
    6. David McAlpine

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment:

      This study addresses valuable questions about the neural mechanisms underlying statistical learning of room acoustics, combining robust behavioral measures with non-invasive brain stimulation. The behavioral findings are strong and extend previous work in psychoacoustics, but the TMS results are modest, with methodological limitations and over-interpretation that weaken the mechanistic conclusions. The strength of evidence is therefore incomplete, and a more cautious interpretation of the stimulation findings, alongside strengthened analyses, would improve the manuscript.

    Reviewed by eLife