eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. β2-subunit alternative splicing stabilizes Cav2.3 Ca2+ channel activity during continuous midbrain dopamine neuron-like activity

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Anita Siller
   2. Nadja T Hofer
   3. Giulia Tomagra
   4. Nicole Burkert
   5. Simon Hess
   6. Julia Benkert
   7. Aisylu Gaifullina
   8. Desiree Spaich
   9. Johanna Duda
   10. Christina Poetschke
   11. Kristina Vilusic
   12. Eva Maria Fritz
   13. Toni Schneider
   14. Peter Kloppenburg
   15. Birgit Liss
   16. Valentina Carabelli
   17. Emilio Carbone
   18. Nadine Jasmin Ortner
   19. Jörg Striessnig

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper suggests that assembly of CaV2.3 with b2a/b2e splice variants confers biophysical properties that enable these channels to contribute to calcium-dependent pacemaking in dopaminergic neurons. The findings could have implications for why these neurons are vulnerable to degeneration in Parkinson's disease. The work will be of interest to ion channel biophysicists and neuroscientists.

     (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. Vision-related convergent gene losses reveal SERPINE3’s unknown role in the eye

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Henrike Indrischek
   2. Juliane Hammer
   3. Anja Machate
   4. Nikolai Hecker
   5. Bogdan Kirilenko
   6. Juliana Roscito
   7. Stefan Hans
   8. Caren Norden
   9. Michael Brand
   10. Michael Hiller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The authors use a comparative genomics approach to predict gene function, in particular genes that have a role in eye development. After identifying the convergent loss of SERPINE3 with vision loss across mammals, the authors confirmed its involvement in eye development by characterizing zebrafish knockouts. This work highlights the power of comparative genomics to generate hypotheses that can be experimentally validated. This work is relevant to a broad audience interested in evolution and adaptation as well as for those studying eye development and eye pathologies.

     (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. Transcriptome network analysis implicates CX3CR1-positive type 3 dendritic cells in non-infectious uveitis

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Sanne Hiddingh
   2. Aridaman Pandit
   3. Fleurieke Verhagen
   4. Rianne Rijken
   5. Nila Hendrika Servaas
   6. Rina CGK Wichers
   7. Ninette H ten Dam-van Loon
   8. Saskia M Imhof
   9. Timothy RDJ Radstake
   10. Joke H de Boer
   11. Jonas JW Kuiper

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The authors provide evidence suggesting the gene expression profile of a specific subset of dendritic cells define features of specific forms of non-infectious uveitis. This work suggests specific pathways in these cells that may have mechanistic import in inflammatory eye disease. This manuscript is of interested to immunologists studying autoimmunity and ocular immunity. While the paper is largely descriptive, the data it presents should serve as a valuable resource for generating hypotheses about the pathogenesis of ocular autoimmune disease.

     (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

4. Robust and Efficient Assessment of Potency (REAP) as a quantitative tool for dose-response curve estimation

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Shouhao Zhou
   2. Xinyi Liu
   3. Xinying Fang
   4. Vernon M Chinchilli
   5. Michael Wang
   6. Hong-Gang Wang
   7. Nikolay V Dokholyan
   8. Chan Shen
   9. J Jack Lee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This article proposes methodology and accompanying software for robustly fitting dose-response curves where response is a number between 0 and 1. When response is transformed using the common logistic transformation, values close to 0 or 1 become large in magnitude, unduly influencing the fitted curve after back-transformation and introducing bias in the estimate of certain parameters. The proposed approach, called Robust and Efficient Assessment of Potency, is less perturbed by these extreme measurements.

     (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

5. The evolution and biological correlates of hand preferences in anthropoid primates

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Kai R Caspar
   2. Fabian Pallasdies
   3. Larissa Mader
   4. Heitor Sartorelli
   5. Sabine Begall

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper combines new and previously generated data on hand preference to show that hand preference strength, but not direction, is predicted by ecology and phylogeny across primates. By drawing on the most expansive data set to date on experimentally determined hand preference, it calls existing hypotheses on the evolution of hand preference into question and shows that the strength of lateralization in humans is uniquely extreme. Its results are of interest to evolutionary anthropologists, primatologists, and evolutionary morphologists. However, concerns about intraspecific variation and the accuracy of handedness estimates for poorly sampled species are incompletely addressed by the manuscript in its current form.

     (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

6. Human WDR5 promotes breast cancer growth and metastasis via KMT2-independent translation regulation

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Wesley L Cai
   2. Jocelyn Fang-Yi Chen
   3. Huacui Chen
   4. Emily Wingrove
   5. Sarah J Kurley
   6. Lok Hei Chan
   7. Meiling Zhang
   8. Anna Arnal-Estape
   9. Minghui Zhao
   10. Amer Balabaki
   11. Wenxue Li
   12. Xufen Yu
   13. Ethan D Krop
   14. Yali Dou
   15. Yansheng Liu
   16. Jian Jin
   17. Thomas F Westbrook
   18. Don X Nguyen
   19. Qin Yan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The authors of this manuscript, which is of interest to the cancer community, identify the chromatin regulator WDR5 as a possible new drug target in triple negative breast cancer. Targeted therapeutics for this patient population are of high scientific and clinical interest, and the authors provide a compelling case that co-targeting WDR5 along with mTOR provides a promising new therapeutic strategy.

     (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

7. Structures of NF-κB p52 homodimer-DNA complexes rationalize binding mechanisms and transcription activation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Wenfei Pan
   2. Vladimir A Meshcheryakov
   3. Tianjie Li
   4. Yi Wang
   5. Gourisankar Ghosh
   6. Vivien Ya-Fan Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript provides a detailed structural and biophysical characterization of several complexes of the p52 homodimer of NF kB and different DNA binding sites. The main topic is the investigation of why the central base pair(s) have a strong influence on the transcriptional activity of the homodimer. The authors correlate structural changes with measurements of kinetic on and off rates to develop a model that explains the differences in activity. The paper is of interest to all working on understanding how transcriptional activity is regulated.

     (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. Inducible lncRNA transgenic mice reveal continual role of HOTAIR in promoting breast cancer metastasis

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Qing Ma
   2. Liuyi Yang
   3. Karen Tolentino
   4. Guiping Wang
   5. Yang Zhao
   6. Ulrike M Litzenburger
   7. Quanming Shi
   8. Lin Zhu
   9. Chen Yang
   10. Huiyuan Jiao
   11. Feng Zhang
   12. Rui Li
   13. Miao-Chih Tsai
   14. Jun-An Chen
   15. Ian Lai
   16. Hong Zeng
   17. Lingjie Li
   18. Howard Y Chang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The long non-coding RNA HOTAIR has been widely reported to be overexpressed in many cancers, including breast cancer, and is strongly associated with disease progression and poor patient outcomes. A valuable new mouse model was developed for studying the functional effects of overexpressing HOTAIR and the mechanism of action of HOTAIR and used to demonstrate overexpression of HOTAIR promoted breast cancer metastasis to the lung. The mouse model and the conclusions will be of interest to researchers interested in improving treatment for breast cancer.

     (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

9. The outer-hair-cell RC time constant: A feature, not a bug, of the mammalian cochlea

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Alessandro Altoè
   2. Christopher A. Shera

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper proposes that specializations in the outer hair cells' biophysical properties along the cochlea may allow them to amplify the reduced receptor potentials in a manner sufficient to explain all present experimental results. Moreover, the filtering provided by the hair cells may be beneficial for hearing soft high-frequency sounds because it decreases noise and harmonic distortions. Importantly, the amplitude of the relevant motions, even with the low-pass-filtered attenuation, are as large as those measured in the high frequency regions of the cochlea. The authors provide insights and suggestions but the paper lacks strong supportive experimental data to definitively resolve the claimed "apparent" membrane time constant conundrum.

     (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

10. Transgenic quails reveal dynamic TCF/β-catenin signaling during avian embryonic development

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Hila Barzilai-Tutsch
    2. Valerie Morin
    3. Gauthier Toulouse
    4. Oleksandr Chernyavskiy
    5. Stephen Firth
    6. Christophe Marcelle
    7. Olivier Serralbo

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      The manuscript describes several optimizations of classic DNA reporter constructs to monitor closely the dynamics of Wnt/β-catenin signalling during development using transgenic avian lines. As Wnt signalling pathway is essential in the homeostasis of vertebrate and invertebrate organisms, a robust tool to analyse finely the dynamics of Wnt/β-catenin pathway is of broad interest for the biology/biomedicine scientific communities.

      (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