eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Cardiolipin deficiency disrupts electron transport chain to drive steatohepatitis

   This article has 35 authors:

   1. Marisa J Brothwell
   2. Guoshen Cao
   3. J Alan Maschek
   4. Annelise M Poss
   5. Alek D Peterlin
   6. Liping Wang
   7. Talia B Baker
   8. Justin L Shahtout
   9. Piyarat Siripoksup
   10. Quentinn J Pearce
   11. Jordan M Johnson
   12. Fabian M Finger
   13. Alexandre Prola
   14. Sarah A Pellizzari
   15. Gillian L Hale
   16. Allison M Manuel
   17. Shinya Watanabe
   18. Edwin R Miranda
   19. Kajsa E Affolter
   20. Trevor S Tippetts
   21. Linda S Nikolova
   22. Ran Hee Choi
   23. Stephen T Decker
   24. Mallikarjun Patil
   25. J Leon Catrow
   26. William L Holland
   27. Sara M Nowinski
   28. Daniel S Lark
   29. Kelsey H Fisher-Wellman
   30. Patrice N Mimche
   31. Kimberley J Evason
   32. James E Cox
   33. Scott A Summers
   34. Zach Gerhart-Hines
   35. Katsuhiko Funai

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper reports on a correlation between diminished cardiolipin content and the severity of steatohepatitis in human subjects. This is supported further by experimental evidence from mice in which the gene encoding a key enzyme in cardiolipin synthesis has been compromised in the liver. The correlations established between lipidology, mitochondrial function, and the induction of respiration and oxidative stress are notable and will be useful to researchers in the field. However, given that the causal relationship between lipid perturbation and the progression of steatohepatitis implied in the title has not been tested experimentally, the evidence supporting the paper's key conclusion is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Local Inhibitory Dynamics Underpin Temporal Integration and Functional Segregation between Barrels and Septa in the Mouse Barrel Cortex

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Ali Özgür Argunşah
   2. Tevye Jason Stachniak
   3. Jenq-Wei Yang
   4. Linbi Cai
   5. Alexander van der Bourg
   6. Rahel Kastli
   7. Theofanis Karayannis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Argunşah et al. investigate the mechanisms underlying the differential response dynamics of barrel vs septa domains in shaping the responses to single vs multiple whiskers. Based on the observation of a higher density of SST+ interneurons in the septa, the authors investigate the hypothesis that Elfn1-dependent short-term plasticity shapes these responses. This important study is, however, supported by incomplete evidence; factors restricting the strength of evidence are the limited spatial resolution of the multi-unit activity, as well as the lack of a mechanistic explanation. This provocative and intellectually stimulating hypothesis provides a contribution to work on how different cell types shape cortical representation.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. The distinct role of human PIT in attention control

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Siyuan Huang
   2. Lan Wang
   3. Sheng He

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reports that the human posterior inferotemporal cortex (hPIT) functions as an attentional priority map, integrating both top-down and bottom-up attentional signals rather than serving solely as an object-processing region. The experiments and analyses are well conducted and provide convincing evidence that hPIT bridges dorsal and ventral attention networks and is robustly modulated by attention across diverse visual tasks. The study will be relevant for researchers investigating visual attention, high-level visual cortex, and the neural mechanisms that integrate endogenous and exogenous attentional control.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Homosensory and heterosensory dishabituation engage distinct circuits in Drosophila

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Alexandros Charonitakis
   2. Sofia Pasadaki
   3. Eirini-Maria Georganta
   4. Kyriaki Foka
   5. Ourania Semelidou
   6. Efthimios MC Skoulakis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides important findings on the neural circuits underlying dishabituation of the olfactory avoidance response in Drosophila. The data as presented provide solid evidence that the dishabituation involves distinct pathways from habituation. They show that reward-activated dopaminergic neurons provide input for within-modal dishabituation, while punishment-activated dopaminergic neurons provide input for cross-modal dishabituation. The work will interest neuroscientists, particularly behavioral neuroscientists working on habituation, neural circuits, and the dopaminergic system.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Unsupervised pipeline for the identification of cortical excitatory and inhibitory neurons in high-density multielectrode arrays with ground-truth validation

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Eloise Giraud
   2. Michael Lynn
   3. Philippe Vincent-Lamarre
   4. Jean-Claude Beique
   5. Jean-Philippe Thivierge

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this manuscript, the authors describe a software package for automatic differentiation of action potentials generated by excitatory and inhibitory neurons, acquired using high-density microelectrode arrays. The work is valuable as it offers a tool with the potential to automatically identify these neuron types in vitro. It is solid, as it provides a tool to identify putative excitatory and inhibitory neurons on high-density electrode arrays, which can be used in conjunction with other existing spike sorting pipelines.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Behavioural and neurogenetic evidence for emotion primitives in the fruit fly Drosophila: insights from the Open Field Test

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yi Lueningschroer-Wang
   2. Emilia Derksen
   3. Maria Steigmeier
   4. Christian Wegener

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study reports findings that support the use of the Open Field Test in Drosophila as a model to study "emotion-like states", which are behavioral responses to several stressful or aversive treatments, and resilience upon their subsequent removal. Behavioral data, by employing established stress-causing treatments and genetic manipulations, are solid. While the results and conceptual framework of this work will be of interest to behaviorists regardless of animal models, the novelty of this work over previous studies could have been clearer.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Designing biochemical circuits with tree search

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Pranav S Bhamidipati
   2. Matthew Thomson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript presents a valuable computational tool for identifying 3-5 gene regulatory network topologies capable of generating oscillatory dynamics. The application of Monte Carlo Tree Search to circuit design is novel and effectively expands the scale at which non-linear behaviours can be explored in silico. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is convincing, and the work will be of interest to the systems and synthetic biology communities. While the evolutionary implications remain unclear, the methodological contribution represents a significant advance in the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Cross-species standardised cortico-subcortical tractography

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Stephania Assimopoulos
   2. Shaun Warrington
   3. Davide Folloni
   4. Katherine Bryant
   5. Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad
   6. Wei Tang
   7. Saad Jbabdi
   8. Sarah R Heilbronner
   9. Rogier B Mars
   10. Stamatios N Sotiropoulos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides a novel approach for delineating subcortical-cortical white matter bundles. The authors provide convincing evidence by harnessing state-of-the-art methods and cross-species data. Together, this effort will be of interest to scientists across multiple subfields and accelerate progress in a biologically critical but methodologically challenging area.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Fifteenth century CE Bolivian maize reveals genetic affinities with ancient Peruvian maize

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Huan Chen
   2. Amy Baetsen-Young
   3. Addie Thompson
   4. Brad Day
   5. Thelma Madzima
   6. Sally Wasef
   7. Claudia Rivera Casanovas
   8. William Lovis
   9. Gabriel Wrobel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study attempts to place an ancient maize sample from Bolivia, dated to the end of the Incan empire, in genetic and geographical context. The analyses show that this sample is most closely related to ancient Peruvian maize, but the data remain inadequate to determine the direction of dispersal and the extent of Inca influence over the genetic make up of the analyzed sample. There are additional deficiencies in the statistical analyses and selection inferences. The topic of the study would appeal to researchers studying maize dispersal and adaptation.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Biologically informed cortical models predict optogenetic perturbations

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Christos Sourmpis
    2. Carl CH Petersen
    3. Wulfram Gerstner
    4. Guillaume Bellec

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important study demonstrates the significance of incorporating biological constraints in training neural networks to develop models that make accurate predictions under novel conditions. By comparing standard sigmoid recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with biologically constrained RNNs, the manuscript offers compelling evidence that biologically grounded inductive biases enhance generalization to perturbed conditions. This manuscript will appeal to a wide audience in systems and computational neuroscience.

    Reviewed by eLife