eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Disintegration promotes protospacer integration by the Cas1-Cas2 complex

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Chien-Hui Ma
   2. Kamyab Javanmardi
   3. Ilya J Finkelstein
   4. Makkuni Jayaram

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     In this manuscript, an in vitro Cas1-Cas2 model system is used to study the reaction used to insert foreign DNA elements into a CRISPR array during the adaptive phase of immunity. The authors propose that hydrolysis of one end of the transposon DNA may be the primary mechanism for the insertion of very small DNA elements (which are difficult to bend tightly) that are found for the proto spacer sequences, and that cellular repair pathways are responsible for ligating the CRISPR array back together in vivo. The findings additionally suggest that water-mediated disintegration has an unappreciated role in the generation of CRISPR arrays as part of the bacterial immune response. These hypotheses are intriguing and of potential interest to those in the CRISPR field. However, it is unclear how this in vitro study, which does not monitor the full the reaction (directionality is lost due to the lack of a PAM sequence in the substrate and several required cellular factors are missing), relates to transposition as it occurs in vivo. Overall, this is an interesting study that challenges the current thinking in the field, but it does not present sufficient evidence to establish the physiological significance of the observed effects, thereby limiting its potential broader impact.

     (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. High-intensity interval training remodels the proteome and acetylome of human skeletal muscle

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Morten Hostrup
   2. Anders Krogh Lemminger
   3. Ben Stocks
   4. Alba Gonzalez-Franquesa
   5. Jeppe Kjærgaard Larsen
   6. Julia Prats Quesada
   7. Martin Thomassen
   8. Brian Tate Weinert
   9. Jens Bangsbo
   10. Atul Shahaji Deshmukh

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary

     This paper will be of interest to readers in the fields of exercise physiology, muscle biology and energy metabolism. The authors provide a proteomic resource where changes in the skeletal muscle proteome and acetyl-proteome have been assessed following the increasingly popular exercise intervention of high intensity interval training (HIIT). The adaptive responses reported provide new insight into the metabolic, contractile and transcriptional changes in muscle, and may represent an excellent resource for stimulating future focussed molecular studies in the field.

     (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. Excitatory neurotransmission activates compartmentalized calcium transients in Müller glia without affecting lateral process motility

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Joshua M Tworig
   2. Chandler J Coate
   3. Marla B Feller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Tworig and colleagues use the mouse retina to explore the motility of Muller glial processes during development and during retinal waves that drive intracellular calcium signals in Muller glia. This is an important topic, because astrocytes in the brain have been suggested to move relative to synapses during neuronal activity. By performing careful and rigorous experiments, the authors find Muller glia processes move during development, but are not driven to move by neuronal activity. This is an important finding that will be of interest to diverse groups of readers.

     (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

4. A phosphoswitch at acinus-serine437 controls autophagic responses to cadmium exposure and neurodegenerative stress

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Nilay Nandi
   2. Zuhair Zaidi
   3. Charles Tracy
   4. Helmut Krämer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Initial insights were provided by yeast genetic experiments into the mechanisms of starvation-induced autophagy. Since malfunctioning of this process is involved in numerous diseases, there is a need for further understanding the role and regulation of autophagy in different physiological settings. This work convincingly shows that a newly identified phosphatase controls basal levels of autophagy via regulation of phospho-acinus levels and reveals how cadmium intoxication triggers a neuroprotective autophagic response in the popular animal model Drosophila.

     (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. Bisphosphonate drugs have actions in the lung and inhibit the mevalonate pathway in alveolar macrophages

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Marcia A Munoz
   2. Emma K Fletcher
   3. Oliver P Skinner
   4. Julie Jurczyluk
   5. Esther Kristianto
   6. Mark P Hodson
   7. Shuting Sun
   8. Frank H Ebetino
   9. David R Croucher
   10. Philip M Hansbro
   11. Jacqueline R Center
   12. Michael J Rogers

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The manuscript by Munoz et al describes the effect of the bisphosphonate zoledronic acid on tissue-resident macrophages. For this, the investigators used both a fluorescent bisphosphonate derivative and an unmodified zoledronic acid, in combination with macrophage populations isolated from different tissues. Based on the pattern of cytokines released by macrophages in the presence of zoledronic acid, the authors conclude that administration of bisphosphonates could, in addition to preventing bone loss, boost immune responses and lessen the consequences of respiratory infections.

     (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

6. Multisensory-motor integration in olfactory navigation of silkmoth, Bombyx mori, using virtual reality system

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Mayu Yamada
   2. Hirono Ohashi
   3. Koh Hosoda
   4. Daisuke Kurabayashi
   5. Shunsuke Shigaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper uses a multi-model virtual reality system to assess which combinations of visual, wind, and olfactory information male silk moths rely on to find a female. The overall conclusion is that for the moths to search effectively, wind direction information is an important input. Vision, on the other hand, while it is used to control angular velocity, does not appear to be important for the moths to search effectively. This paper is of interest to neuroscientists and engineers interested in how multimodal sensory input controls navigational behavior. The experiments and modeling effort provide an advance in our understanding of how odor and wind information are combined in male silkmoths as they search for females.

     (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. Unsupervised Bayesian Ising Approximation for decoding neural activity and other biological dictionaries

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Damián G Hernández
   2. Samuel J Sober
   3. Ilya Nemenman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Hernandez et al use an elegant mathematical framework to build a novel tool for extracting unusually frequent (or infrequent) patterns in multidimensional biological data when only a small number of measurements are available. This is a common problem in many biological settings, so the tool could potentially be used to answer a wide range of statistically hard questions. As a first demonstration of its use, the authors show that the new tool can be used to reveal novel properties about neural responses in zebra finches during song generation.

     (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

8. Cryo-EM structures of CTP synthase filaments reveal mechanism of pH-sensitive assembly during budding yeast starvation

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Jesse M Hansen
   2. Avital Horowitz
   3. Eric M Lynch
   4. Daniel P Farrell
   5. Joel Quispe
   6. Frank DiMaio
   7. Justin M Kollman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This work provides valuable new information to those who study enzyme mechanisms, nucleotide metabolism, and the response of cells to stress such as nutrient deprivation. The study focuses on CTP Synthase (CTPS), an important enzyme in nucleotide biosynthesis that has been shown to assemble into foci and filaments in yeast cells undergoing starvation conditions. The authors study the structure of yeast CTPS and its propensity to polymerize in low pH (mimicking starvation conditions), and how CTPS filamentation relates to the cellular assemblies.

     (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

9. Eye movements reveal spatiotemporal dynamics of visually-informed planning in navigation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Seren Zhu
   2. Kaushik J Lakshminarasimhan
   3. Nastaran Arfaei
   4. Dora E Angelaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The research conducted examines how the patterns of human eye-movements recorded during the navigation of complex mazes in immersive virtual reality relates to the computational demands of navigating the mazes. A key result is evidence of sweeps to the goal across the maze and back from the goal towards the current location prior to movement, which may help with understanding computational principles of planning. A key strength is its sophisticated computational measures for characterizing the multiple dimensions of eye movement data and the fact this work is novel with few prior studies investigating this important topic. Its findings and methodology are of interest to many areas within cognitive neuroscience, notably decision making and navigation.

     (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

10. Vinculin recruitment to α-catenin halts the differentiation and maturation of enterocyte progenitors to maintain homeostasis of the Drosophila intestine

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Jerome Bohere
    2. Buffy L Eldridge-Thomas
    3. Golnar Kolahgar

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This study examines a potential mechanosensation mechanism in fly intestinal stem cells and their terminal enteroblast progeny. The manuscript’s data clearly demonstrate a role for vinc in suppressing the proliferation of midgut stem cells and the differentiation of their terminal enteroblast progeny and suggest that this role is exerted specifically through enteroblast vinc. The authors find that similar phenotypes are induced by genetic manipulations of vinc, a-cat, and myosin, and they argue that this similarity implies that vinc activity in enteroblasts is mechanosensitive. These findings are potentially relevant to biologists interested in stem cells, tissue homeostasis, fate decisions, and mechanobiology. Initial studies of vinc null flies failed to reveal any essential functions in development or viability, so the report of an adult-specific phenotype in the intestine is notable. However, the current manuscript falls short of demonstrating a key pillar of its model – that enteroblast vinc is regulated by mechanical tension. In addition, some important experiments using either whole-animal mutants or cell-specific manipulations leave room for alternate interpretations.

      (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