eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Learning accurate path integration in ring attractor models of the head direction system

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Pantelis Vafidis
   2. David Owald
   3. Tiziano D'Albis
   4. Richard Kempter

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists studying the navigation system, and in particular those who study the ability of animals to path integrate. This study proposes an elegant synaptic plasticity rule that maintains the connectivity required for path integration by integrating visual and self-motion input arriving at different dendritic locations in a neuron. This idea is applied to the central complex of Drosophila, a well-characterized system. The study is timely and well executed, however the generality of the suggested mechanism needs further discussion.

     (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

2. Environmental selection overturns the decay relationship of soil prokaryotic community over geographic distance across grassland biotas

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Biao Zhang
   2. Kai Xue
   3. Shutong Zhou
   4. Kui Wang
   5. Wenjing Liu
   6. Cong Xu
   7. Lizhen Cui
   8. Linfeng Li
   9. Qinwei Ran
   10. Zongsong Wang
   11. Ronghai Hu
   12. Yanbin Hao
   13. Xiaoyong Cui
   14. Yanfen Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study, which is of interest to students of microbial biogeography, explores the distance-decay relationship for soil prokaryotic communities in alpine and temperate grasslands. Although the experimental scale and conclusions are fairly substantial, there are concerns about the methods, as well as several concerns related to the inferences and presented 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 #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Coronary blood vessels from distinct origins converge to equivalent states during mouse and human development

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Ragini Phansalkar
   2. Josephine Krieger
   3. Mingming Zhao
   4. Sai Saroja Kolluru
   5. Robert C Jones
   6. Stephen R Quake
   7. Irving Weissman
   8. Daniel Bernstein
   9. Virginia D Winn
   10. Gaetano D'Amato
   11. Kristy Red-Horse

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study investigates the relationships of endothelial cells that comprise the coronary vessels of the heart in mouse and humans. Starting from the knowledge that two sources of progenitor cells contribute to the coronary vessels, the work shows that adult coronary endothelial cells do not retain expression memory of their source, nor do they respond differently to cardiac injury. Finally, human datasets were generated and compared to mouse to show overall strong similarity between the species in coronary endothelial cell subtypes, suggesting that mouse is a relevant model for translation to human treatments and therapies.

     (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, preLights

4. Tempo and mode of gene expression evolution in the brain across primates

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Katherine Rickelton
   2. Trisha M Zintel
   3. Jason Pizzollo
   4. Emily Miller
   5. John J Ely
   6. Mary Ann Raghanti
   7. William D Hopkins
   8. Patrick R Hof
   9. Chet C Sherwood
   10. Amy L Bauernfeind
   11. Courtney C Babbitt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper represents a significant contribution to the study of gene expression and brain evolution in primates, which will be of interest to the evolutionary biology, anthropology, and comparative neuroscience communities. By performing RNA-seq on 18 taxa across the breadth of the extant primate phylogeny, the authors can examine how gene expression levels have changed over the past 70 million years of evolution and attempt to infer genes that contribute to the large amount of variation in brain size across primates. While the data set itself is valuable and exciting, methodological detail is lacking and several opportunities to leverage phylogenetically informed methods to study gene expression and brain size evolution are missed.

     (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

5. Minimal-invasive enhancement of auditory perception by terahertz wave modulation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Xiaoxuan Tan
   2. Kaijie Wu
   3. Shuang Liu
   4. Yifang Yuan
   5. Chao Chang
   6. Wei Xiong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The work investigates cochlear physiology by applying terahertz wave modulation to the outer hair cells (OHCs). Improved cochlea sensitivity and a change in potassium membrane current is demonstrated. The work is of clear interest to auditory neuroscientists and has the potential for future clinical interest.

     (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

6. Modelling the neural code in large populations of correlated neurons

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Sacha Sokoloski
   2. Amir Aschner
   3. Ruben Coen-Cagli

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper is of potential interest to neuroscientists interested in neural coding. It presents a novel family of statistical models that is more accurate than simple models that assume independence between neurons. The results provide evidence that the proposed encoding models accurately capture key statistics of realistic neural activity, and that Bayesian decoding based on them can be accurate and efficient. The manuscript would benefit from a more complete comparison with other models.

     (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. Leveraging the Mendelian disorders of the epigenetic machinery to systematically map functional epigenetic variation

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Teresa Romeo Luperchio
   2. Leandros Boukas
   3. Li Zhang
   4. Genay Pilarowski
   5. Jenny Jiang
   6. Allison Kalinousky
   7. Kasper D Hansen
   8. Hans T Bjornsson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript finds common molecular features in the blood of three "Mendelian Disorder of the Epigenetic Machinery" (MDEM) mouse models. These shared features (chromatin accessibility and gene expression) may underlie some of the clinical similarities of these disorders. This work will be of interest to researchers, and to some clinicians studying MDEM and epigenetic variation in mammals. Additional analyses are needed to strengthen the conclusions.

     (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. Control of Arabidopsis shoot stem cell homeostasis by two antagonistic CLE peptide signalling pathways

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Jenia Schlegel
   2. Gregoire Denay
   3. Rene Wink
   4. Karine Gustavo Pinto
   5. Yvonne Stahl
   6. Julia Schmid
   7. Patrick Blümke
   8. Rüdiger GW Simon

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Vertical patterning of the shoot meristem is regulated by a well-characterized feedback loop involving the CLAVATA3 peptide, the CLAVATA1 receptor-like kinase and the WUSCHEL transcription factor. Cell loss from the Peripheral Zone of the meristem, due to production of lateral organs, requires a compensatory size increase of the stem cell domain, i.e. there is a need to understand how stem cell activities in the Central Zone and Organizing Center are coordinated to regulate organ initiation and cell differentiation in the Peripheral Zone. The authors identify a new signaling pathway to control shoot meristem function in Arabidopsis, suggesting that the peptide CLE40 and the receptor kinase-like protein BAM1 act from the Peripheral Zone to stimulate stem cell fate via WUSCHEL expression, and antagonistically to the CLV pathway. The model is novel and exciting and will be of interest to plant scientists as well as those interested in developmental patterning. Some additional evidence is required to fully sufficient to support all claims in the manuscript.

     (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. Molecular determinants of phase separation for Drosophila DNA replication licensing factors

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Matthew W Parker
   2. Jonchee A Kao
   3. Alvin Huang
   4. James M Berger
   5. Michael R Botchan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper studies the role of phase separation in replication initiation, with a focus on Cdt1. Sorting out the relative roles of phase separation and other mechanisms will require a detailed dissection of the amino acids driving phase separation, which can then be used to probe the role of phase separation in cells. Here the authors perform extensive and comprehensive analyses that are well done and that set the scene for a full dissection of the role of condensation in replication initiation inside cells.

     (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

10. An experimental test of the effects of redacting grant applicant identifiers on peer review outcomes

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Richard K Nakamura
    2. Lee S Mann
    3. Mark D Lindner
    4. Jeremy Braithwaite
    5. Mei-Ching Chen
    6. Adrian Vancea
    7. Noni Byrnes
    8. Valerie Durrant
    9. Bruce Reed

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This manuscript by Nakamura et al provides additional information on the impact of bias in the scientific review process. The authors find that on average applications from White scientists scored better than those from Black scientists. However, blinding reviewers to race worsened the score of the White scientists with no impact on the score for Black scientists. In view of the recognized value of increased diversity in science, the additional information provided in this manuscript adds new data to this discussion. Potential solutions to this bias though are complex.

      (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