eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Versatile patterns in the actin cortex of motile cells: Self-organized pulses can coexist with macropinocytic ring-shaped waves

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Arik Yochelis
   2. Sven Flemming
   3. Carsten Beta

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Individual cells may act in response to stimuli or in a self-organized fashion. The relative weight of these two modes determines in the end to which degree cells or rather organs/organisms carry function. This study reports an example of very complex self-organization of actin waves as the coexistence of slowly moving broad waves of high F-actin concentration and rapidly propagating planar F-actin pulses. The paper is interesting for everybody interested in conceptual questions like signalling versus self-organization, in cellular morpho-dynamics and theory of dynamic patterns.

     (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 remarkable adaptive paradigm of heart performance and protection emerges in response to marked cardiac-specific overexpression of ADCY8

   This article has 38 authors:

   1. Kirill V Tarasov
   2. Khalid Chakir
   3. Daniel R Riordon
   4. Alexey E Lyashkov
   5. Ismayil Ahmet
   6. Maria Grazia Perino
   7. Allwin Jennifa Silvester
   8. Jing Zhang
   9. Mingyi Wang
   10. Yevgeniya O Lukyanenko
   11. Jia-Hua Qu
   12. Miguel Calvo-Rubio Barrera
   13. Magdalena Juhaszova
   14. Yelena S Tarasova
   15. Bruce Ziman
   16. Richard Telljohann
   17. Vikas Kumar
   18. Mark Ranek
   19. John Lammons
   20. Rostislav Bychkov
   21. Rafael de Cabo
   22. Seungho Jun
   23. Gizem Keceli
   24. Ashish Gupta
   25. Dongmei Yang
   26. Miguel A Aon
   27. Luigi Adamo
   28. Christopher H Morrell
   29. Walter Otu
   30. Cameron Carroll
   31. Shane Chambers
   32. Nazareno Paolocci
   33. Thanh Huynh
   34. Karel Pacak
   35. Robert Weiss
   36. Loren Field
   37. Steven J Sollott
   38. Edward G Lakatta

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The study is overall well-planned and the amount of data presented by the authors is impressive. The work nicely incorporates animal-level physiology (echocardiography data), tests for known canonical markers of hypertrophy, and then delves into an unbiased analysis of the transcriptome and proteome of LV tissue in bulk. The techniques and analyses in the study are adequately executed and within the realm of expertise of the Lakatta laboratory. This study is a necessary and crucial first step to extensively phenotype this mouse line and generate hypotheses for further work.

     (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. Most cancers carry a substantial deleterious load due to Hill-Robertson interference

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Susanne Tilk
   2. Svyatoslav Tkachenko
   3. Christina Curtis
   4. Dmitri A Petrov
   5. Christopher D McFarland

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Cancers have frequently been found to show little evidence for purifying selection in their patterns of mutations. The key observation here is that tumors with low mutation burden show compelling evidence of efficient selection, but that tumors with high mutation burden do not. This is an important finding. The broader implication is that high mutation load tumors carry a substantial deleterious mutation load and may use common strategies to tolerate them, possibly providing a therapeutic target. Overall this work makes important observational and conceptual contributions to cancer genomics.

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

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Developmental Transitions Coordinate Assembly of the Coxiella burnetii Dot/Icm Type IV Secretion System

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Donghyun Park
   2. Samuel Steiner
   3. Meng Shao
   4. Craig R. Roy
   5. Jun Liu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Park et al.'s work provides insight into the infection processes of the human pathogen Coxiella burnetii with unprecedented detail. Their time course of cellular infection reveals the timing of key events and detects a previously unrecognized membrane structure. This work will shed new insight into the infection process of this pathogen allowing new targets for the treatment of infection with Coxiella.

     (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

5. Conduction velocity along a key white matter tract is associated with autobiographical memory recall ability

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Ian A Clark
   2. Siawoosh Mohammadi
   3. Martina F Callaghan
   4. Eleanor A Maguire

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     In this paper, the authors show that autobiographical memory recall is related to a specific biophysical property of the parahippocampal cingulum bundle, the so-called MR g-ratio. This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists studying associations between brain structure and cognitive processes. The data support the main conclusions of the paper. However, it is unclear how reliable the results are and whether the findings would generalize to situations beyond the specific one studied.

     (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

6. Dilated cardiomyopathy mutation E525K in human beta-cardiac myosin stabilizes the interacting-heads motif and super-relaxed state of myosin

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. David V Rasicci
   2. Prince Tiwari
   3. Skylar ML Bodt
   4. Rohini Desetty
   5. Fredrik R Sadler
   6. Sivaraj Sivaramakrishnan
   7. Roger Craig
   8. Christopher M Yengo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study seeks to develop the use of a FRET-based sensor for the formation of the folded 'interacting heads motif' structure for cardiac myosin, which is thought by some to represent a super-relaxed state with lower basal ATPase activity. This study offers some evidence that there is a relationship between the super-relaxed state and the 'interacting heads motif' structure, and that a specific dilated cardiomyopathy mutant in this myosin stabilizes the 'interacting heads motif' conformation. This paper will be of interest to muscle and cardiovascular biologists as it provides important insights into the correlation of structural and functional states of motor proteins in the context of cardiac muscle. The data qualitatively support this correlation and suggest a new mode of action of disease-causing mutations that lead to impaired contractile 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 #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Generation of a transparent killifish line through multiplex CRISPR/Cas9mediated gene inactivation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Johannes Krug
   2. Birgit Perner
   3. Carolin Albertz
   4. Hanna Mörl
   5. Vera L Hopfenmüller
   6. Christoph Englert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study by Krug et al. uses the turquoise killifish, an emerging model for biomedical research, to generate a valuable live-imaging platform. Initially, the authors generate a transparent killifish they named Klara. Specifically, using optimized CRISPR approaches, they simultaneously inactivate three genes that are required for the formation of primary pigment cells in fish (melanophores, iridophores, xanthophores) and next, to monitor cell-cycle arrest and cellular senescence, they generate a cdkn1a-GFP reporter line using HDR-mediated integration. The paper would benefit from a further description of the HDR approach, the genetic models, and improved figures. Together, this platform will be an extremely valuable resource with broad application, including for aging research, physiology, toxicology, and regeneration.

     (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

8. Phase separation of competing memories along the human hippocampal theta rhythm

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Casper Kerrén
   2. Sander van Bree
   3. Benjamin J Griffiths
   4. Maria Wimber

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This pre-registration study by Kerrén et al. used a proactive interference task in combination with MEG recordings on humans to test predictions of a previous computational model postulating that neural representations of competing memories are associated with varied phases of the hippocampus theta-band rhythm. Their results largely confirmed the hypothesis and suggest that reactivations of target and competitor memories indeed occur at different phases of theta oscillations, which is further related to the intrusion effect in behavior.

     (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

9. CaV1 and CaV2 calcium channels mediate the release of distinct pools of synaptic vesicles

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Brian D Mueller
   2. Sean A Merrill
   3. Shigeki Watanabe
   4. Ping Liu
   5. Longgang Niu
   6. Anish Singh
   7. Pablo Maldonado-Catala
   8. Alex Cherry
   9. Matthew S Rich
   10. Malan Silva
   11. Andres Villu Maricq
   12. Zhao-Wen Wang
   13. Erik M Jorgensen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Using an elegant combination of cutting-edge techniques, the authors show that in the neuromuscular junction of the nematode C. elegans two different classes of voltage-activated calcium channels differentially trigger exocytosis of distinct pools of synaptic vesicles, one docked to the active zone and a second one localized more distant from the active zone. These findings will be of broad interest to neuroscientists interested in the mechanisms of calcium-mediated release of neurotransmitters at chemical synapses.

     (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

10. ProteInfer, deep neural networks for protein functional inference

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Theo Sanderson
    2. Maxwell L Bileschi
    3. David Belanger
    4. Lucy J Colwell

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      The authors describe a newly developed software, ProteInfer, that analyses protein sequences to predict their functions. It is based on a single convolutional neural network scan for all known domains in parallel. This software provides a convincing approach for all computational scientists as well as experimentalists working near the interface of machine learning and molecular biology.

      (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