eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Spontaneous neuronal oscillations in the human insula are hierarchically organized traveling waves

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Anup Das
   2. John Myers
   3. Raissa Mathura
   4. Ben Shofty
   5. Brian A Metzger
   6. Kelly Bijanki
   7. Chengyuan Wu
   8. Joshua Jacobs
   9. Sameer A Sheth

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript is of interest to neuroscientists willing to deepen their knowledge related to the role of the insula and to any scientist interested in oscillatory activities. The substantial dataset and the novel methodological approach provide interesting insights on the functional organization of this brain region.

     (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

2. Functional and structural segregation of overlapping helices in HIV-1

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Maliheh Safari
   2. Bhargavi Jayaraman
   3. Henni Zommer
   4. Shumin Yang
   5. Cynthia Smith
   6. Jason D Fernandes
   7. Alan D Frankel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study should be of broad interest to all virologists and many students of molecular genetics. It examines the constraints in a part of the HIV 1 genome that encodes important functional regions of two proteins, Rev and Env, in overlapping reading frames. It is convincingly shown that functional segregation occurs in a part of the overlap region that is critical for both proteins, which has important implications for HIV biology and may aid in the design of future HIV therapies.

     (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

3. Schizosaccharomyces pombe Rtf2 is important for replication fork barrier activity of RTS1 via splicing of Rtf1

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Alice M Budden
   2. Murat Eravci
   3. Adam T Watson
   4. Eduard Campillo-Funollet
   5. Antony W Oliver
   6. Karel Naiman
   7. Antony M Carr

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     DNA replication forks can become arrested either in a cellular program or by accident. In fission yeast, DNA replication fork arrests at the locus called the RTS1 are mediated by a DNA binding protein, Rtf1. In this paper, by combining genetics, proteomics, and genomics approaches, the authors nicely showed the role of Rtf2 as a fork barrier to mediate the splicing of rtf1 mRNA. The splicing-mediated control of protein abundance provides a new regulatory mechanism for the programmed DNA replication barrier.

     (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

4. Cells use molecular working memory to navigate in changing chemoattractant fields

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Akhilesh Nandan
   2. Abhishek Das
   3. Robert Lott
   4. Aneta Koseska

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper addresses how cells can robustly maintain direction during movement by ignoring noise in concentration gradients while also being able to adapt to new signals in those gradients. The authors study this tension in EGFR signaling by postulating a form of cellular memory in a theoretical framework based on dynamical systems and bifurcation theory. The authors also carry out experiments that raise interesting unresolved questions. This paper will be of interest to scientists of all stripes working on cell motility and for theorists who take a dynamical systems view of biological phenomena.

     (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

5. A point mutation in the nucleotide exchange factor eIF2B constitutively activates the integrated stress response by allosteric modulation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Morgane Boone
   2. Lan Wang
   3. Rosalie E Lawrence
   4. Adam Frost
   5. Peter Walter
   6. Michael Schoof

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript addresses a significant and timely topic in translational control and will be of interest to researchers studying molecular biology or diseases impacted by the Integrated Stress Response (ISR). The combination of biochemical, structural, and in-cell experiments constitutes a comprehensive study that supports the proposed model for allosteric regulation of the active/inactive states of the eIF2B complex. The findings are relevant to neuropathologies, infectious and inflammatory diseases, diabetes, and metabolic disorders.

     (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. Maternal SMCHD1 controls both imprinted Xist expression and imprinted X chromosome inactivation

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Iromi Wanigasuriya
   2. Sarah A. Kinkel
   3. Tamara Beck
   4. Ellise A. Roper
   5. Kelsey Breslin
   6. Heather J. Lee
   7. Andrew Keniry
   8. Matthew E. Ritchie
   9. Marnie E. Blewitt
   10. Quentin Gouil

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study assess the role of SMCHD1 provided by the oocyte at fertilization in the regulation of Xist expression in the embryo. They also provide preliminary analysis of the downstream effects of faulty Xist expression, on X chromosome silencing. This work has implications in epigenetics and embryonic development and aims at an audience interested in gene dosage regulation in mammals. Although of potential interest, some further analytical and experimental work is needed to understand how SMHCD1 works on the early stages of X inactivation.

     (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

7. Exogenous capture accounts for fundamental differences between pro- and antisaccade performance

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Allison T Goldstein
   2. Terrence R Stanford
   3. Emilio Salinas

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     When the subjects are instructed to produce saccades away from suddenly appearing visual targets under time pressure, early saccades tend to be directed incorrectly to the peripheral target, suggesting that exogenous and endogenous signals that are related to the target position and instruction, respectively, compete to control the motor responses. In this study, the authors provide further evidence for the independence of these two processes by showing that they can account for temporal evolution of correct saccades regardless of the instruction, stimulus luminance or motor bias.

     (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. Hyperreactivity to uncertainty is a key feature of subjective cognitive impairment

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Bahaaeddin Attaallah
   2. Pierre Petitet
   3. Elista Slavkova
   4. Vicky Turner
   5. Youssuf Saleh
   6. Sanjay G Manohar
   7. Masud Husain

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper tests the hypothesis that subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) is linked to hyperreactivity to uncertainty. Using an information-gathering task, the authors demonstrate that individuals with subjective cognitive impairment sample more than controls under uncertainty. Despite the clear strengths of the experimental design and the novel insights into SCI, some of the findings rely on problematic between-subject correlation analyses that should be corrected. Furthermore, alternative accounts of the main findings are consistent with 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. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

9. One-shot generalization in humans revealed through a drawing task

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Henning Tiedemann
   2. Yaniv Morgenstern
   3. Filipp Schmidt
   4. Roland W Fleming

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper employs innovative approaches to elegantly tackle the question of how we are able to learn an object category with just a single example, and what features we use to distinguish that category. Through a collection of rigorous experiments and analytical methods, the paper demonstrates people's impressive abilities at rapid category learning and highlights the important role of distinctive features for determining category membership. This paper and its approach will be of interest to those who study learning, memory, and perception, while also contributing to a growing field which uses naturalistic drawing as a window into high-level cognition.

     (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. Structure-based electron-confurcation mechanism of the Ldh-EtfAB complex

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Kanwal Kayastha
    2. Alexander Katsyv
    3. Christina Himmrich
    4. Sonja Welsch
    5. Jan M Schuller
    6. Ulrich Ermler
    7. Volker Müller

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This paper describes a new structure for a complex between a bifurcating electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) and its client dehydrogenase. Because electrons are being supplied by the dehydrogenase, the ETF executes confurcation in contrast to all of those elucidated so far, which function in the opposite direction to effect bifurcation. As electron-confurcation and electron-bifurcation have emerged as important paradigms of cellular bioenergetics, the data reported herein pave the way for future exploration of similar electron transfer systems and lay the ground for understanding their structural basis. The work will be of relevance to all who are interested in the mechanisms of enzymes.

      (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