eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Proof of concept for multiple nerve transfers to a single target muscle

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Matthias Luft
   2. Johanna Klepetko
   3. Silvia Muceli
   4. Jaime Ibáñez
   5. Vlad Tereshenko
   6. Christopher Festin
   7. Gregor Laengle
   8. Olga Politikou
   9. Udo Maierhofer
   10. Dario Farina
   11. Oskar C Aszmann
   12. Konstantin Davide Bergmeister

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The study uses a novel rodent surgical model for establishing that dual nerve transfer in the upper extremity improves neuromuscular regeneration in comparison to single nerve transfer. The authors provide a detailed description of how the model is developed and they characterize neuromuscular regeneration through nerve crush, neurotomy, behavioral analysis, and retrograde labeling. The nerve transfer method is clearly delineated for researchers to use in future scientific and clinical applications. The evidence clearly support the main study conclusions. Thus, this manuscript is of great interest to readers in the field of peripheral nerve repair and neural interfaces.

     (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

2. STING mediates immune responses in the closest living relatives of animals

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Arielle Woznica
   2. Ashwani Kumar
   3. Carolyn R Sturge
   4. Chao Xing
   5. Nicole King
   6. Julie K Pfeiffer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The authors addressed the role of a STING ortholog in antimicrobial defense of choanoflagellates. The analysis of the response of the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis to a variety of bacterial species revealed that exposure of M. brevicollis to Pseudomonas aeruginosa conditioned medium results in choanoflagellate death and the authors found that this is dependent on the newly discovered ortholog of STING. Characterization reveals that the STING response can be induced by 2'3' cGAMP, which parallels the activation of STING in diverse species. In addition, the finding that cyclic dinucleotide treatment induces autophagy also has parallels with the effector pathways observed in other organisms. There are a number of strengths as outlined by the Reviewers. First, the development of a Choanaoflagellate model system to study innate immunity, second with the development of genetics for M. brevicollis, third, the demonstration of a functional STING system in one of the closest relatives to animals and fourth, that cell death occurs in response to cyclic dinucleotides.

     (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, preLights

3. Fast and accurate annotation of acoustic signals with deep neural networks

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elsa Steinfath
   2. Adrian Palacios-Muñoz
   3. Julian R Rottschäfer
   4. Deniz Yuezak
   5. Jan Clemens

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper presents and evaluates a machine learning method for segmenting and annotating animal acoustic communication signals. The paper presents results from applying the method to signals from Drosophila, mice, and songbirds, but the method should be useful for a broad range of researchers who record animal vocalizations. The method appears to be easily generalizable and has high throughput and modest training times.

     (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 names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Causal roles of prefrontal cortex during spontaneous perceptual switching are determined by brain state dynamics

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Takamitsu Watanabe

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     By combining real-time closed-loop EEG-TMS and computational modelling, this study ambitiously examined the causal role of prefrontal cortex in resolving perceptual ambiguity. It impressively demonstrates brain-state-dependent effects on bistable perception.

     (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. Experimental evidence that chronic outgroup conflict reduces reproductive success in a cooperatively breeding fish

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Ines Braga Goncalves
   2. Andrew N Radford

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper uses controlled exposure to territorial intrusion to show that repeated exposure to conflict between groups compromises fitness in social fish. With a host of results relating to fertility, behavior, and parental investment, its findings will increase confidence in the argument that intergroup conflict is an important factor in social evolution. There are several statistical issues that should be addressed to minimize the possibility of false-positive results.

     (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

6. An empirical energy landscape reveals mechanism of proteasome in polypeptide translocation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Rui Fang
   2. Jason Hon
   3. Mengying Zhou
   4. Ying Lu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     AAA+ ATPases consume chemical energy in form of ATP to catalyze essential cellular reactions. Here, computational and biochemical approaches are used to model how the six subunits of the AAA+ ATPase Rpt1-6 coordinate their enzymatic activity with each other to exert unidirectional pulling forces on target polypeptide chains that promote protein unfolding. Although the technical aspects of the work are sometimes difficult to follow, the findings indicate that the order in which ATPase active sites fire is generally sequential, much like a rotary engine. The system can tolerate "misfires" - instances in which a subunit fails to hydrolyze ATP - by skipping the problematic subunit. The work should appeal to the broad AAA+ community and researchers trying to understand the biophysical principles by which complex biological machines operate.

     (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

7. Local chromatin fiber folding represses transcription and loop extrusion in quiescent cells

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Sarah G Swygert
   2. Dejun Lin
   3. Stephanie Portillo-Ledesma
   4. Po-Yen Lin
   5. Dakota R Hunt
   6. Cheng-Fu Kao
   7. Tamar Schlick
   8. William S Noble
   9. Toshio Tsukiyama

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This work characterizes chromatin compaction in quiescent yeast cells and its role in the repression of gene expression. The authors' findings that chromatin compaction via heterogeneous interactions between nucleosomes directly contributes to transcriptional repression provides a useful conceptual paradigm for studies of quiescence in other organisms.

     (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

8. Laminar microcircuitry of visual cortex producing attention-associated electric fields

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jacob A Westerberg
   2. Michelle S Schall
   3. Alexander Maier
   4. Geoffrey F Woodman
   5. Jeffrey D Schall

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study recorded brain activity in monkeys to identify the neural mechanisms underlying an attention-related scalp ERP component that is similar to the human N2pc component. Intriguing evidence was provided that the surface potential was at least partly a result of current flows in the feedback-receiving supragranular and infragranular layers of area V4, not the granular layer that receives feedforward inputs. However, it is not entirely clear if these very interesting intracortical effects are the source of the scalp ERP effects.

     (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 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Antigenic evolution of human influenza H3N2 neuraminidase is constrained by charge balancing

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yiquan Wang
   2. Ruipeng Lei
   3. Armita Nourmohammad
   4. Nicholas C Wu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper performs a systematic analysis of the fitness landscape of the influenza virus protein neuraminidase (NA). The paper analyzes 864 different combinations of mutations, over six genetic backgrounds. The main findings are that the fitness landscape correlates well across genetic backgrounds, and that natural evolution of neuraminidase seems to select for neutrally charged variants.

     (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

10. Dual signaling via interferon and DNA damage response elicits entrapment by giant PML nuclear bodies

    This article has 12 authors:

    1. Myriam Scherer
    2. Clarissa Read
    3. Gregor Neusser
    4. Christine Kranz
    5. Anna K Kuderna
    6. Regina Müller
    7. Florian Full
    8. Sonja Wörz
    9. Anna Reichel
    10. Eva-Maria Schilling
    11. Paul Walther
    12. Thomas Stamminger

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This work has potential broad interest to both virologists and cell biologists interested in the regulatory functions of promyelocytic leukaemia nuclear bodies (PML-NBs). The authors use a combination of imaging techniques to identify PML, the principal scaffolding protein of PML-NBs, to form a variety of different structures in response to viral infection, immune stimulation, and DNA damage. Thestudy identifies PML to restrict the replication of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) at multiple stages of infection through the formation of alternate PML-scaffold 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