eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Evolution of brilliant iridescent feather nanostructures

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Klara Katarina Nordén
   2. Chad M Eliason
   3. Mary Caswell Stoddard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Nordén et al. examine feather iridescent color diversity across bird species. Their findings show how key modifications in feather melanosomes, pivotal nanophotonic structures, underlie the brilliant colors of iridescent feathers, broadening feather color range approximately twofold. In a next step, the authors evaluate the function of feather melanosomes by performing optical modelling of nanostructure diversity, evaluating up to 4500 distinct nanostructure combinations, which are then contrasted with the observed (color) spectral data from 120 plumage regions across 80 (diverse) bird species. This meticulous integration of diverse methods across a comprehensive dataset will not only inform biologists studying structural color biodiversity, but it may also inspire engineers designing nanophotonic 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. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

2. The generation of cortical novelty responses through inhibitory plasticity

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Auguste Schulz
   2. Christoph Miehl
   3. Michael J Berry
   4. Julijana Gjorgjieva

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper presents the results of a model for cortical plasticity and resulting increase in neuronal responses to unexpected stimuli. This is an elegant study that provides a number of interesting, experimentally testable, hypotheses and develops a prediction for a mechanism for novelty response generation. However, a number of concerns were raised about the model, including how it relates to certain experimental data, that should be addressed.

     (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. Distributed coding of duration in rodent prefrontal cortex during time reproduction

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Josephine Henke
   2. Raven Bunk
   3. Dina von Werder
   4. Stefan Häusler
   5. Virginia L Flanagin
   6. Kay Thurley

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study investigates the neural underpinnings of the bias property of timing, namely an overestimation for short and underestimation for long intervals, during an interval reproduction task in the medial prefrontal cortex of gerbils. The key novel result is that only neural populations with mixed responses, including ramping activity with linear increasing and slope-changing modulations as a function of reproduced durations, can encode the bias effect. Overall, experiment and data analysis are technically sound, and the conclusions are mostly well supported. However, the interpretation is too broad, and the manuscript would benefit of a more focused framing.

     (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. Target-specific control of olfactory bulb periglomerular cells by GABAergic and cholinergic basal forebrain inputs

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Didier De Saint Jan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study reports on the synaptic impact of basal forebrain stimulation on a population of olfactory bulb interneurons in acute mouse brain slices. The author reveals that optogenetic stimulation of GABAergic basal forebrain afferents by and large inhibits the discharge of periglomerular cells, whereas cholinergic afferents evoke a prolonged, M1 receptor-mediated depolarization and increase in firing in a subpopulation of periglomerular cells. The current study would further our understanding of the olfactory neural circuit and how different co-released neurotransmitters shape postsynaptic neuronal responses.

     (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

5. Information transfer in mammalian glycan-based communication

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Felix F Fuchsberger
   2. Dongyoon Kim
   3. Natalia Baranova
   4. Hanka Vrban
   5. Marten Kagelmacher
   6. Robert Wawrzinek
   7. Christoph Rademacher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript applies the framework of information theory to lectin-glycan signaling modulating the NF-kappaB response. The paper suggests that the information transfer capacity and information flow through the signaling pathway may be affected by a combined action of two distinct receptors having different distributions across a cell population, with possible implications for the immune response. The paper can have an impact on our understanding of signaling through multiple receptors converging on the same output, and will be of interest to experts in cellular signaling, particularly those with interest in innate immune response.

     (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

6. Selective sorting of microRNAs into exosomes by phase-separated YBX1 condensates

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Xiao-Man Liu
   2. Liang Ma
   3. Randy Schekman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The ribonucleoprotein YBX1 is required for sorting of miR-233 to exosomes. Here, the authors demonstrate that YBX1 undergoes liquid liquid phase separation (LLPS) both in vitro and in vivo and YBX1 droplets specifically partition miR-233 and mediate its packaging into exosomes. The authors also demonstrate a possible connection between YBX1 condensates and P-bodies during cargo sorting into EVs. Overall, this is an elegant study and with a few additional experiments to clarify the involvement of P bodies, the story will be of broad impact to those interested in LLPS and RNA packaging into exosomes.

     (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

7. An image reconstruction framework for characterizing initial visual encoding

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Ling-Qi Zhang
   2. Nicolas P Cottaris
   3. David H Brainard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This rigorous computational study simulates the sampling of the visual image by cone photoreceptors in the human eye, and explains how the image content can be reconstructed from those cone signals. The authors show that a number of properties of the human retina and of human perception are predicted from these simulations. The manuscript could be further improved by analysis of how these conclusions compare to those reached by alternate theoretical approaches, and by a consideration of human eye movements.

     (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

8. Evolutionary footprints of a cold relic in a rapidly warming world

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Eva Wolf
   2. Emmanuel Gaquerel
   3. Mathias Scharmann
   4. Levi Yant
   5. Marcus A Koch

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript has the potential to be of broad interest to scientists seeking to understand the evolutionary dynamics of plants during past periods of rapid climate change. Specifically, within the target genus of Cochlearia, the results indicate increased rates of speciation and diversification in response to pronounced glacial cycles. Future work to establish more direct mechanistic links between the results and conclusions will improve our understanding of adaptation and speciation.

     (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

9. Pathogen clonal expansion underlies multiorgan dissemination and organ-specific outcomes during murine systemic infection

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Karthik Hullahalli
   2. Matthew K Waldor

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Monitoring changes in pathogenic bacterial populations after bloodstream infection are poorly understood and in this work the authors develop new genetic analytic tools to dissect bacterial population dynamics at sites of infection. By harvesting bacteria from different sites and times of infection and performing deep sequencing to define the distribution of specific tagged-strains the authors provide a highly detailed snapshot of populations, with discriminatory power superior to prior studies. The work paves the way to future such studies in other organisms that cause persistent infection in humans.

     (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

10. De novo synthesized polyunsaturated fatty acids operate as both host immunomodulators and nutrients for Mycobacterium tuberculosis

    This article has 12 authors:

    1. Thomas Laval
    2. Laura Pedró-Cos
    3. Wladimir Malaga
    4. Laure Guenin-Macé
    5. Alexandre Pawlik
    6. Véronique Mayau
    7. Hanane Yahia-Cherbal
    8. Océane Delos
    9. Wafa Frigui
    10. Justine Bertrand-Michel
    11. Christophe Guilhot
    12. Caroline Demangel

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      In this study, the authors highlight a role for de novo biosynthesis of Poly-unsaturated Fatty Acids and the consequence effect of these metabolites on the production of arachidonic acid. The increased bio-availability of arachidonic acid seemingly promotes mycobacterial growth whilst inhibition of arachidonic acid formation, and its resultant downstream eicosanoid products, affect macrophage function but somewhat surprisingly do not affect growth of M. tuberculosis in macrophages or in mice. The uptake of the different classes of fatty acids in axenic culture as well as in macrophages is explored and the authors demonstrate that the Mce1 transporter is largely responsible for their uptake during in vitro growth but only plays a partial role in their uptake during growth of the pathogen in host cells. This work will be of interest to bacteriologists and those studying infectious diseases.

      (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