eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Fat2 polarizes the WAVE complex in trans to align cell protrusions for collective migration

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Audrey Miller Williams
   2. Seth Donoughe
   3. Edwin Munro
   4. Sally Horne-Badovinac

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of broad interest to scientists who study collective cell migration and cytoskeletal dynamics. The findings of this paper connect proteins involved in planar polarity to the actin protrusive machinery which establishes an axes for polarized collective cell migration. The data presented largely supports the claims of the authors who take advantage of quantitative imaging techniques and Drosophila genetics to establish this connection.

     (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

2. Binary and analog variation of synapses between cortical pyramidal neurons

   This article has 37 authors:

   1. Sven Dorkenwald
   2. Nicholas L Turner
   3. Thomas Macrina
   4. Kisuk Lee
   5. Ran Lu
   6. Jingpeng Wu
   7. Agnes L Bodor
   8. Adam A Bleckert
   9. Derrick Brittain
   10. Nico Kemnitz
   11. William M Silversmith
   12. Dodam Ih
   13. Jonathan Zung
   14. Aleksandar Zlateski
   15. Ignacio Tartavull
   16. Szi-Chieh Yu
   17. Sergiy Popovych
   18. William Wong
   19. Manuel Castro
   20. Chris S Jordan
   21. Alyssa M Wilson
   22. Emmanouil Froudarakis
   23. JoAnn Buchanan
   24. Marc M Takeno
   25. Russel Torres
   26. Gayathri Mahalingam
   27. Forrest Collman
   28. Casey M Schneider-Mizell
   29. Daniel J Bumbarger
   30. Yang Li
   31. Lynne Becker
   32. Shelby Suckow
   33. Jacob Reimer
   34. Andreas S Tolias
   35. Nuno Macarico da Costa
   36. R Clay Reid
   37. H Sebastian Seung

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Synaptic connections are crucial for determining neural circuit function and for storing adaptive changes in the brain. This study performs a highly detailed quantitative analysis of certain excitatory connections in mouse neocortex, and finds that the physical size of these connections has a bimodal distribution. This is an important finding that has implications for our understanding of synaptic plasticity and neural circuit dynamics.

     (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

3. Decoding the IGF1 signaling gene regulatory network behind alveologenesis from a mouse model of bronchopulmonary dysplasia

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Feng Gao
   2. Changgong Li
   3. Susan M Smith
   4. Neil Peinado
   5. Golenaz Kohbodi
   6. Evelyn Tran
   7. Yong-Hwee Eddie Loh
   8. Wei Li
   9. Zea Borok
   10. Parviz Minoo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to lung biologists, developmental biologists, and neonatologists interested in lung injury. In this manuscript, the authors used gene expression signatures to construct a gene regulatory network to identify genes associated with alveologenesis. While reviewers were impressed with the novelty of the approach, questions were raised about the robustness of the results in mice and the validation in human samples.

     (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

4. Non-invasive classification of macrophage polarisation by 2P-FLIM and machine learning

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Nuno GB Neto
   2. Sinead A O'Rourke
   3. Mimi Zhang
   4. Hannah K Fitzgerald
   5. Aisling Dunne
   6. Michael G Monaghan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Neto et al set out to use Two-Photon FLIM and machine learning to classify macrophages that are polarised along the M1/M2 axis and then subjected to different metabolic stresses classically used to distinguish metabolic strategies of different cell states. Additional information is sought regarding the photophysics of the measurements and if there are an adequate number of photons to fairly compare the three conditions. The work will be of interest to immunologists, physiologists interested in metabolism and engineers looking to translate the findings.

     (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

5. Structural basis for RNA-duplex unwinding by the DEAD-box helicase DbpA

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Jan Philip Wurm

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript is interesting to a broad audience in the general fields of RNA and structural biology. It provides detailed and important molecular insight into one of the mechanisms by which ATP-fueled RNA helicases can cause the local destabilisation of terminal base-pairs and eventually contribute to RNA structure remodelling and it is a prime example of how crystallographic high-resolution snapshots of conformational intermediates can be combined with sophisticated NMR techniques and assays into a comprehensive model. The manuscript would benefit from a broader and more explicit comparative discussion including the limitations of the proposed model, because DbpA is a rather specialised RNA helicase and because the double-stranded RNA substrates were specifically designed to exclusively investigate unwinding from the side of a short 5'-overhang.

     (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

6. Brain-wide screen of prelimbic cortex inputs reveals a functional shift during early fear memory consolidation

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Lucie Dixsaut
   2. Johannes Gräff

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper, of interest to neuroscientists in the field of memory engrams, presents novel insights to understand the complex functional network connected with the prefrontal cortex that shape memory-related neuronal ensembles and modulate memory formation in a time-dependent manner. The large data set due to the systematic approach yielded transparent, well analyzed, and clearly presented data. Still, the conclusions require additional support and extended discussion.

     (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. Macrophages regulate gastrointestinal motility through complement component 1q

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Mihir Pendse
   2. Haley De Selle
   3. Nguyen Vo
   4. Gabriella Quinn
   5. Chaitanya Dende
   6. Yun Li
   7. Cristine N Salinas
   8. Tarun Srinivasan
   9. Daniel C Propheter
   10. Alexander A Crofts
   11. Eugene Koo
   12. Brian Hassell
   13. Kelly A Ruhn
   14. Prithvi Raj
   15. Yuuki Obata
   16. Lora V Hooper

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study will be of broad interest to neuroscientists, immunologists, and gastroenterologists, revealing a novel role of complement C1q in intestinal macrophages and the regulation of gut motility. The manuscript is well written and key datasets are convincing, but the lack of mechanistic details that lead to dysmotility require additional supportive datasets at this time.

     (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. Three-dimensional flagella structures from animals’ closest unicellular relatives, the Choanoflagellates

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Justine M Pinskey
   2. Adhya Lagisetty
   3. Long Gui
   4. Nhan Phan
   5. Evan Reetz
   6. Amirrasoul Tavakoli
   7. Gang Fu
   8. Daniela Nicastro

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Cryo-electron tomography has been successful at uncovering the details of the eukaryotic cilium/flagellum but there remains a limited number of taxa represented in the studies to date. Pinskey et al. fill this gap with a flagellar structure from choanoflagellates: single-celled organisms that are the closest living relatives of animals. The findings yield many new insights of broad interest to the field, such as the similarity of outer dynein arms and radial spokes to metazoan cilia, the observation of a flagellar vanes, and the presence of mysterious barb structures.

     (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

9. Audiovisual task switching rapidly modulates sound encoding in mouse auditory cortex

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Ryan J Morrill
   2. James Bigelow
   3. Jefferson DeKloe
   4. Andrea R Hasenstaub

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study establishes for the first time that selective auditory attention reduces activity in the auditory cortex, similar to effects produced by engagement in a behavioral task. Moreover the study establishes the diversity of cortical modulations generated by attention.

     (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

10. Reconstruction of transmission chains of SARS-CoV-2 amidst multiple outbreaks in a geriatric acute-care hospital: a combined retrospective epidemiological and genomic study

    This article has 15 authors:

    1. Mohamed Abbas
    2. Anne Cori
    3. Samuel Cordey
    4. Florian Laubscher
    5. Tomás Robalo Nunes
    6. Ashleigh Myall
    7. Julien Salamun
    8. Philippe Huber
    9. Dina Zekry
    10. Virginie Prendki
    11. Anne Iten
    12. Laure Vieux
    13. Valérie Sauvan
    14. Christophe E Graf
    15. Stephan Harbarth

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This paper by Dr. Abbas and colleagues uses genomic and epidemiological methods to track SARS-CoV-2 spread in a healthcare facility. It demonstrates that genomic data can be used to track the spread of viruses in healthcare environments and documents that inter-ward transmission is important in healthcare settings. Overall, the conclusions are supported by the data and analysis and the paper demonstrates that genomics may be an important adjunct tool for tracking the nosocomial transmission of respiratory viruses.

      (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 names with the authors.)

    Reviewed by eLife, ScreenIT