eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Extracellular vesicle-mediated release of bis(monoacylglycerol)phosphate is regulated by LRRK2 and Glucocerebrosidase activity

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Elsa Meneses-Salas
   2. Moisés Castellá
   3. Marianna Arnold
   4. Frank Hsieh
   5. Ruben Fernández-Santiago
   6. Mario Ezquerra
   7. Alicia Garrido
   8. María-José Martí
   9. Carlos Enrich
   10. Suzanne R Pfeffer
   11. Kalpana Merchant
   12. Albert Lu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study presents the potentially interesting idea that LRRK2 regulates cellular BMP levels and their release via extracellular vesicles, with GCase activity further modulating this process in mutant LRRK2-expressing cells. However, some of the evidence supporting these conclusions remains incomplete, and additional work is suggested under certain conditions. Overall, the study will be of interest to cell biologists working on Parkinson's disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Forecasting protein evolution by integrating birth-death population models with structurally constrained substitution models

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. David Ferreiro
   2. Luis Daniel González-Vázquez
   3. Ana Prado-Comesaña
   4. Miguel Arenas

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript introduces a useful protein-stability-based fitness model for simulating protein evolution and unifying non-neutral models of molecular evolution with phylogenetic models. The model is applied to five viral proteins that are of structural and functional importance. While the general modelling approach is solid, and effectively preserves folding stability, the evidence for the model's predictive power remains limited, since it shows little improvement over neutral models in predicting protein evolution. The work should be of interest to researchers developing theoretical models of molecular evolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Convergent iridescence and divergent chemical signals in sympatric sister-species of Amazonian butterflies

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Joséphine Ledamoisel
   2. Bruno Buatois
   3. Rémi Mauxion
   4. Christine Andraud
   5. Melanie McClure
   6. Vincent Debat
   7. Violaine Llaurens

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable assessment of and solid evidence for increased similarity in visual appearance combined with increased chemical differences between two butterfly species in sympatry compared with differences between three populations of one of the two species in allopatry. The similarity in visual appearance hints to an evolutionary response to shared predators (but alternative explanations are possible). Thus, the difference in chemical signaling likely helps to avoid between-species mating in sympatry.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Unsupervised reference-free inference reveals unrecognized regulated transcriptomic complexity in human single cells

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Roozbeh Dehghannasiri
   2. George Henderson
   3. Rob Bierman
   4. Tavor Baharav
   5. Kaitlin Chaung
   6. Peter Wang
   7. Julia Salzman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable advance for the analysis of gene expression variation at the level of individual cells by introducing a novel reference-free framework that can detect splicing, fusion, editing, immune-receptor diversity and repeated elements in sequencing data. The evidence supporting these claims is solid, with rigorous validation on simulated datasets and extensive analysis of full-length single-cell sequencing data demonstrating improved performance over existing methods. This work will be of particular interest to researchers developing methods for high-resolution transcriptome analysis and to those studying cellular heterogeneity in health and disease.

   Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

5. Towards a unified molecular mechanism for ligand-dependent activation of NR4A-RXR heterodimers

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Xiaoyu Yu
   2. Yuanjun He
   3. Theodore M Kamenecka
   4. Douglas J Kojetin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigated whether the nuclear receptor Nur77 is regulated by a non-canonical mechanism of ligand-induced disruption of its interaction with RXRg, similar to the family member Nurr1. The overall evidence is solid, but additional mechanisms that have not been fully explored in this study might contribute as well. This manuscript will be of interest to scientists focusing on mechanisms of transcriptional regulation.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Aging-associated Increase of GATA4 levels in Articular Cartilage is Linked to Impaired Regenerative Capacity of Chondrocytes and Osteoarthritis

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Meagan J Makarczyk
   2. Yiqian Zhang
   3. Alyssa Aguglia
   4. Olivia Bartholomew
   5. Sophie Hines
   6. Kate Li
   7. Suyash Sinkar
   8. Silvia Liu
   9. Craig Duvall
   10. Hang Lin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important finding on the role of GATA4 in aging- and OA-associated cartilage pathology. The conclusions are well supported by compelling in vitro and in vivo evidence. This work will be of broad interest to both cell biologists and orthopedic/skeletal health clinicians.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Functional analysis across model systems implicates ribosomal proteins in growth and proliferation defects associated with hypoplastic left heart syndrome

   This article has 21 authors:

   1. Tanja Nielsen
   2. Anaïs Kervadec
   3. Jeanne L Theis
   4. Maria A Missinato
   5. James Marchant
   6. Michaela Romero
   7. Katya Marchetti
   8. Aashna Lamba
   9. Xin-Xin I Zeng
   10. Marie Berenguer
   11. Stanley M Walls
   12. Analyne Schroeder
   13. Katja Birker
   14. Greg Duester
   15. Paul Grossfeld
   16. Timothy J Nelson
   17. Timothy M Olson
   18. Karen Ocorr
   19. Rolf Bodmer
   20. Georg Vogler
   21. Alexandre R Colas

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study applies an innovative multi-model strategy to implicate the ribosomal protein (RP) encoding genes as candidates causing Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. The evidence from the screen in stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and whole genome sequencing of human patients, followed by functional analyses of RP genes in fly and fish models, is convincing and supports the authors' claims. This work and methodology applied would be of broad interest to medical biologists working on congenital heart diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Somatic hypermutation patterns in immunoglobulin variable regions are established independently of the local transcriptional landscape

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Ursula E Schoeberl
   2. Johanna Fitz
   3. Kimon Froussios
   4. Renan Valieris
   5. Iordanis Ourailidis
   6. Marina Makharova
   7. Bernd Bauer
   8. Tobias Neumann
   9. Eva-Maria Wiedemann
   10. Monika Steininger
   11. Adriana Cantoran Garcia
   12. Marialaura Mastrovito
   13. Hugo Mouquet
   14. Israel Tojal Da Silva
   15. Rushad Pavri

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study clarifies that stalled RNA pol II is not sufficient for AID targeting, which is important to the field. The authors provide solid experimental evidence that RNA poll II stalling is not the driving mechanism for AID targeting, and even though the results are generally "negative", they are highly relevant to our current understanding of SHM. The authors propose premature transcription termination as a possible mechanism to determine V gene mutability, but the study does not experimentally address such possibilities. This paper makes investigators rethink the model with which AID finds single-strand DNA in the genome.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Structural mechanism of strand exchange by the RAD51 filament

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Luay Joudeh
   2. Robert E Appleby
   3. Joseph D Maman
   4. Luca Pellegrini

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This landmark study describes the structure of the human RAD51 filament with a recombination intermediate called the displacement loop (D-loop). Using cryogenic structural, biochemical, and single-molecule analyses, the authors provide compelling evidence on how the RAD51 filament promotes strand exchange between single-stranded and double-stranded DNAs. The findings are highly relevant to the fields of homologous recombination, DNA repair, and genome stability.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Prenatal light exposure affects number sense and the mental number line in young domestic chicks

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Rosa Rugani
    2. Matteo Macchinizzi
    3. Yujia Zhang
    4. Lucia Regolin

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This fundamental study demonstrates how a left-right bias in the relationship between numerical magnitude and space depends on brain lateralization. The evidence is compelling and will be of interest to researchers studying numerical cognition, brain lateralization, and cognitive brain development more broadly.

    Reviewed by eLife