eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Does the evolution of division of labour require accelerating returns from individual specialisation?

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Guy Alexander Cooper
   2. Hadleigh Frost
   3. Ming Liu
   4. Stuart Andrew West

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This is a strong and concise paper using mathematical modelling to explore the conditions under which reproductive division of labour can evolve. It clarifies open questions regarding scenarios where specialising individuals experience diminishing returns from engaging in division of labour. The authors provide a comprehensive set of analyses highlighting when division of labour can evolve under such conditions and when not. The paper's primary claims are supported by the analysis provided, and the paper is likely of interest to evolutionary biologists, ecologists, computational biologists, and microbiologists.

     (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. Macrophage network dynamics depend on haptokinesis for optimal local surveillance

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Neil Paterson
   2. Tim Lämmermann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The role of integrins in macrophage function in tissues is not well understood. Using conditional knockout mice with defective integrin (beta1 and beta2) or talin expression, the authors determine that beta1 integrins and talon are each required for normal morphology and efferocytosis by tissue macrophages. This contrasts with chemotaxis in a 3D environments, which is intact in the absence of integrins, as found for dendritic cells and neutrophils. This is an important finding as it established a molecular mechanism for functional integration of macrophages in diverse tissue microenvironments.

     (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. The Digital Brain Bank, an open access platform for post-mortem imaging datasets

   This article has 28 authors:

   1. Benjamin C Tendler
   2. Taylor Hanayik
   3. Olaf Ansorge
   4. Sarah Bangerter-Christensen
   5. Gregory S Berns
   6. Mads F Bertelsen
   7. Katherine L Bryant
   8. Sean Foxley
   9. Martijn P van den Heuvel
   10. Amy FD Howard
   11. Istvan N Huszar
   12. Alexandre A Khrapitchev
   13. Anna Leonte
   14. Paul R Manger
   15. Ricarda AL Menke
   16. Jeroen Mollink
   17. Duncan Mortimer
   18. Menuka Pallebage-Gamarallage
   19. Lea Roumazeilles
   20. Jerome Sallet
   21. Lianne H Scholtens
   22. Connor Scott
   23. Adele Smart
   24. Martin R Turner
   25. Chaoyue Wang
   26. Saad Jbabdi
   27. Rogier B Mars
   28. Karla L Miller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to a large class of neuroscientists who work with MRI. It presents the Digital Brain Bank website and project, which is an effort to curate and share high-quality post-mortem co-registered MRI and histology data of healthy human brains, pathological human brains, and brains from a variety of other species. These data allow investigators to address scientific questions that cannot be answered with in vivo imaging alone and are accompanied by an online browser-based viewer. The described datasets provide a highly valuable resource for multiscale investigations of brain architecture and comparative neuroanatomy, which is unique in its selection of modalities and species.

     (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. Cellular assays identify barriers impeding iron-sulfur enzyme activity in a non-native prokaryotic host

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Francesca D'Angelo
   2. Elena Fernández-Fueyo
   3. Pierre Simon Garcia
   4. Helena Shomar
   5. Martin Pelosse
   6. Rita Rebelo Manuel
   7. Ferhat Büke
   8. Siyi Liu
   9. Niels van den Broek
   10. Nicolas Duraffourg
   11. Carol de Ram
   12. Martin Pabst
   13. Emmanuelle Bouveret
   14. Simonetta Gribaldo
   15. Béatrice Py
   16. Sandrine Ollagnier de Choudens
   17. Frédéric Barras
   18. Gregory Bokinsky

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Three of Nature's life-sustaining processes, respiration, photosynthesis, and nitrogen fixation, all rely on proteins (Fe-S protein) that contain simple inorganic cofactors constructed of Fe and S (Fe-S clusters). Fe-S proteins also participate in a huge and diverse array of metabolic processes. As such there has been considerable interest over the past two decades towards understanding how Fe-S clusters are formed and distributed to their cognate proteins. A related issue, the topic of the present work, is: why is it that many Fe-S proteins from diverse microbial species cannot be heterologously produced in Escherichia coli in active forms? This issue is of considerable interest not only from the perspective of microbial Fe-S proteins but also for heterologous expression of active eukaryotic Fe-S proteins. The study provides insights on the phylogenetic and biosynthetic limitations concerning formation of functional heterologously expressed Fe-S proteins.

     (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 name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Mapping dopaminergic projections in the human brain with resting-state fMRI

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Marianne Oldehinkel
   2. Alberto Llera
   3. Myrthe Faber
   4. Ismael Huertas
   5. Jan K Buitelaar
   6. Bastiaan R Bloem
   7. Andre F Marquand
   8. Rick C Helmich
   9. Koen V Haak
   10. Christian F Beckmann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper provides a novel method for characterizing the functional topography of the striatum based on functional connectivity profiles. Importantly, a series of ambitious analyses provide compelling (if somewhat indirect) evidence via associations to SPECT imaging, in patient populations (Parkinson's Disease), and under drug manipulation (L-DOPA), that this organization is strongly associated with the distribution of dopamine transporter concentrations. Markers of dopamine neurophysiology and signaling, especially those available in standard, non-invasive imaging acquisitions, are of great interest across a wide number of research domains.

     (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

6. Modular, robust, and extendible multicellular circuit design in yeast

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Alberto Carignano
   2. Dai Hua Chen
   3. Cannon Mallory
   4. R Clay Wright
   5. Georg Seelig
   6. Eric Klavins

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     In this manuscript, the authors address important problems in the field of synthetic biology about scalability, robustness, and modularity. They used multiple strains to build gene circuits and demonstrate the modular composition of strain circuits with an automated design strategy to achieve a target behavior from a large space of possible functional circuit architectures. The major claims of the manuscript are well supported by solid quantitative data and systematic mathematical modeling analysis, and the approaches used are thoughtful and rigorous. This paper is of interest to synthetic biologists within the field of designing community-level behaviors, such as distributed computing, in multicellular consortia.

     (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

7. The enteric nervous system of the C. elegans pharynx is specified by the Sine oculis-like homeobox gene ceh-34

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Berta Vidal
   2. Burcu Gulez
   3. Wen Xi Cao
   4. Eduardo Leyva-Díaz
   5. Molly B Reilly
   6. Tessa Tekieli
   7. Oliver Hobert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to developmental neurobiologists working on the transcriptional control of neural cell fate and connectivity. The data largely support the authors' finding that a single homeodomain transcription factor is a circuit-wide specifier of cell fate that functions combinatorially with other factors in the development of the C. elegans pharyngeal nervous system. The authors speculate about intriguing similarities between the nematode pharyngeal nervous system and vertebrate enteric nervous systems.

     (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

8. Constructing the hierarchy of predictive auditory sequences in the marmoset brain

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Yuwei Jiang
   2. Misako Komatsu
   3. Yuyan Chen
   4. Ruoying Xie
   5. Kaiwei Zhang
   6. Ying Xia
   7. Peng Gui
   8. Zhifeng Liang
   9. Liping Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists interested in predictive coding. By using complementary neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods to measure brain-wide activation patterns in marmosets in response to sound pattern violations, the authors provide evidence for the hierarchical organization of predictive coding across subcortical and cortical levels of the auditory pathway.

     (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

9. Microsaccades as a marker not a cause for attention-related modulation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Gongchen Yu
   2. James P Herman
   3. Leor N Katz
   4. Richard J Krauzlis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This is very much needed work, especially in light of the recent debate regarding whether or not microsaccades are the cause of peripheral attentional effects. A few influential papers have been published recently strongly suggesting that attentional effects are primarily the result of the execution of tiny microsaccades that humans/primates perform during fixation while attending to peripheral stimuli. These past findings have, naturally, a number of implications for the way we interpret visual attention, and raised the question of whether shifts of attention are dependent on microsaccades. By explicitly comparing and quantifying the effects of attention on neuronal responses in the presence and in the absence of microsaccades, this work provides important insights into this debate.

     (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

10. NBI-921352, a first-in-class, NaV1.6 selective, sodium channel inhibitor that prevents seizures in Scn8a gain-of-function mice, and wild-type mice and rats

    This article has 50 authors:

    1. JP Johnson
    2. Thilo Focken
    3. Kuldip Khakh
    4. Parisa Karimi Tari
    5. Celine Dube
    6. Samuel J Goodchild
    7. Jean-Christophe Andrez
    8. Girish Bankar
    9. David Bogucki
    10. Kristen Burford
    11. Elaine Chang
    12. Sultan Chowdhury
    13. Richard Dean
    14. Gina de Boer
    15. Shannon Decker
    16. Christoph Dehnhardt
    17. Mandy Feng
    18. Wei Gong
    19. Michael Grimwood
    20. Abid Hasan
    21. Angela Hussainkhel
    22. Qi Jia
    23. Stephanie Lee
    24. Jenny Li
    25. Sophia Lin
    26. Andrea Lindgren
    27. Verner Lofstrand
    28. Janette Mezeyova
    29. Rostam Namdari
    30. Karen Nelkenbrecher
    31. Noah Gregory Shuart
    32. Luis Sojo
    33. Shaoyi Sun
    34. Matthew Taron
    35. Matthew Waldbrook
    36. Diana Weeratunge
    37. Steven Wesolowski
    38. Aaron Williams
    39. Michael Wilson
    40. Zhiwei Xie
    41. Rhena Yoo
    42. Clint Young
    43. Alla Zenova
    44. Wei Zhang
    45. Alison J Cutts
    46. Robin P Sherrington
    47. Simon N Pimstone
    48. Raymond Winquist
    49. Charles J Cohen
    50. James R Empfield

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This exciting study reports on the characterization of a novel compound that preferentially targets Nav1.6 voltage-gated sodium channels and shows substantial activity against epilepsy associated SCN8A mutations and seizure activity in a variety of animal models. This compound and approach has significant promise to be translated into a therapeutic for individuals with treatment resistant epilepsy.

      (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