eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Variation in human herpesvirus 6B telomeric integration, excision, and transmission between tissues and individuals

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Michael L Wood
   2. Colin D Veal
   3. Rita Neumann
   4. Nicolás M Suárez
   5. Jenna Nichols
   6. Andrei J Parker
   7. Diana Martin
   8. Simon PR Romaine
   9. Veryan Codd
   10. Nilesh J Samani
   11. Adriaan A Voors
   12. Maciej Tomaszewski
   13. Louis Flamand
   14. Andrew J Davison
   15. Nicola J Royle

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Human Herpesvirus 6A (HHV6A) and 6B are common herpesviruses that establish lifelong infection in latent form and can cause severe disease upon reactivation. They are spread by acquired infection of free virus and by germ-line transmission of inherited chromosomally-integrated HHV-6A/6B in telomeres. The authors develop an approach to analyse a hypervariable region of the HHV-6B genome and exploit it to investigate the relationship between acquired and inherited virus, presenting evidence that HHV-6B can readily transition between telomere-integrated and free virus forms.

     (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

2. Persistent Firing Neurons in the Medial Septum Drive Arousal and Locomotion

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Endre Levente Marosi
   2. Karolina Korvasova
   3. Felix Ludwig
   4. Hiroshi Kaneko
   5. Liudmila Sosulina
   6. Tom Tetzlaff
   7. Stefan Remy
   8. Sanja Mikulovic

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper suggest that that intrinsically generated persistent firing activity of medial septal glutamatergic (VGluT2+) neurons underlies initiation of locomotor activity. In this work, the authors provide evidence for a non-canonical role for persistent firing in initiating locomotion by performing a series of technically difficult experiments to dissect the circuit mechanisms of the persistent firing. This manuscript will be of interest to readers in the field of spatial navigation, motor control, and neural network dynamics.

     (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

3. Pneumococcal genetic variability in age-dependent bacterial carriage

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Philip HC Kremer
   2. Bart Ferwerda
   3. Hester J Bootsma
   4. Nienke Y Rots
   5. Alienke J Wijmenga-Monsuur
   6. Elisabeth AM Sanders
   7. Krzysztof Trzciński
   8. Anne L Wyllie
   9. Paul Turner
   10. Arie van der Ende
   11. Matthijs C Brouwer
   12. Stephen D Bentley
   13. Diederik van de Beek
   14. John A Lees

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Strain variability in bacterial infections is a confounding factor in the treatment and prevention of the associated diseases. Pneumococcal disease is widespread, and the current vaccine targets only a subset of circulating strains, with disease and vaccine efficacy likely varying with the age of the host. Using two large databases of pneumococcal genomes, this study explores the associations between genomic factors and the age of the human host. Ultimately, these data and related studies will establish whether and how vaccines should be differentially designed for children and the elderly. This work will be of interest to those working in bacterial infections and host-pathogen genomics.

     (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. The need for high-quality oocyte mitochondria at extreme ploidy dictates mammalian germline development

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Marco Colnaghi
   2. Andrew Pomiankowski
   3. Nick Lane

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Non-nuclear genomes, such as those of mitochondria, contribute to many aspects of cellular function, organismal function, and fitness. Understanding their biology and evolutionary dynamics is thus an essential component eukaryotic evolution. The manuscript addresses an important and complex problem regarding the relationship between mitochondrial mutations, their impacts on gamete function, and the attendant evolutionary processes. The authors present a computational approach to distinguish between three hypotheses about the level of selection most likely to explain the distribution of mitochondrial mutations in human populations. They propose that selection among mitochondria is the most likely process to match empirical, clinical data, for mitochondrial mutation loads. There is, however, currently a mismatch between the fact that the data are derived from numerous different species whose biology is not always comparable, the model, and the title of the paper.

     (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. Homotopic contralesional excitation suppresses spontaneous circuit repair and global network reconnections following ischemic stroke

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Annie R Bice
   2. Qingli Xiao
   3. Justin Kong
   4. Ping Yan
   5. Zachary Pollack Rosenthal
   6. Andrew W Kraft
   7. Karen P Smith
   8. Tadeusz Wieloch
   9. Jin-Moo Lee
   10. Joseph P Culver
   11. Adam Q Bauer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Bice et al. present new work using an optogenetics-based stimulation to test how this affects stroke recovery in mice. Namely, can they determine if contralateral stimulation of S1 would enhance or hinder recovery after a stroke? They found that stimulation of the cortex contralateral to the site of stroke impairs recovery from this stroke, and impairs the brain mapping and the connectivity that normally emerges in recovery from stroke. This unexpected finding in a mouse model relates to clinical literature on the role of the contralateral cortex in recovery.

     (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. Multiple timescales of sensory-evidence accumulation across the dorsal cortex

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Lucas Pinto
   2. David W Tank
   3. Carlos D Brody

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Previous studies have indicated that neurons in different cortical areas have different intrinsic timescales. In this study, Pinto and colleagues aimed at establishing the functional significance of intrinsic timescales across cortical regions by performing optogenetic silencing of cortical areas in an evidence accumulation task in mice. The results are of broad interest, but the reviewers identified a few important issues that need to be addressed to validate the authors' 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. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

7. The BigBrainWarp toolbox for integration of BigBrain 3D histology with multimodal neuroimaging

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Casey Paquola
   2. Jessica Royer
   3. Lindsay B Lewis
   4. Claude Lepage
   5. Tristan Glatard
   6. Konrad Wagstyl
   7. Jordan DeKraker
   8. Paule-J Toussaint
   9. Sofie L Valk
   10. Louis Collins
   11. Ali R Khan
   12. Katrin Amunts
   13. Alan C Evans
   14. Timo Dickscheid
   15. Boris Bernhardt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The manuscript introduces a new tool - BigBrainWarp - which consolidates several of the tools used to analyse BigBrain into a single, easy to use and well documented tool. The BigBrain project produced the first open, high-resolution cell-scale histological atlas of a whole human brain. The tool presented here should make it easy for any researcher to use the wealth of information available in the BigBrain for the annotation of their own neuroimaging data. This is an important resource, with diverse tutorials demonstrating broad application.

     (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

8. Cancer risk perception and physician communication behaviors on cervical cancer and colorectal cancer screening

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Diane M Harper
   2. Madiha Tariq
   3. Asraa Alhawli
   4. Nadia Syed
   5. Minal Patel
   6. Ken Resnicow

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The manuscript by Harper et al. examines the cancer risk perceptions, provider communication behaviors and demographic factors influencing the uptake of both, cervical and colorectal cancer screening among 50- to 65-years-old women. Towards those goals, the authors adapted and administered behavioral questions from the Health Information National Trends Survey to a multiethnic population sample in Southeast Michigan. Self-reported cancer screenings for the tumors (as defined by the USPSTF updated guidelines) served as the variable outcome. The study has public health merit in its identification of distinct predictors for cervical cancer and colorectal cancer screenings. The insights from this work on screening behavior differences among women, the perception of cancer risks and impact of positive provider communication, point to the need for exploring new ways for more holistic and integrated cancer prevention with a targeted focus. The strengths of the study include (i) the identification of an unmet need in public health in a neglected patient population, (ii) the track-record of the seasoned investigators, and (iii) the recognition of two potentially actionable insights obtained from the study. Weaknesses of the work include (i) the descriptive and specialized nature of the manuscript, (ii) the regional setting of the study and the question of how generalizable their conclusions would be in other contexts, and (iii) the relatively incremental advance of the reported findings.

     (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. Translational control of polyamine metabolism by CNBP is required for Drosophila locomotor function

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Sonia Coni
   2. Federica A Falconio
   3. Marta Marzullo
   4. Marzia Munafò
   5. Benedetta Zuliani
   6. Federica Mosti
   7. Alessandro Fatica
   8. Zaira Ianniello
   9. Rosa Bordone
   10. Alberto Macone
   11. Enzo Agostinelli
   12. Alessia Perna
   13. Tanja Matkovic
   14. Stephan Sigrist
   15. Gabriella Silvestri
   16. Gianluca Canettieri
   17. Laura Ciapponi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper is of interest and relevance to clinicians and researchers in the field of muscular dystrophy, a condition that causes loss of muscle function and mobility primarily in older patients. The presented experiments suggest that at least part of the pathology of DM2, a certain form of muscular dystrophy, is caused by defects in a gene that is required for the production of small molecules, called polyamines which are known to support muscle health and function. Interestingly, in a Drosophila model of DM2, feeding with polyamines can restore muscle function. The paper gains broad interest by the demonstration that consistent with the findings in Drosophila, muscle biopsies from human DM2 patients show decreased ODC and polyamine levels, raising the possibility of using polyamines for therapy or prevention.

     (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

10. Two different cell-cycle processes determine the timing of cell division in Escherichia coli

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Alexandra Colin
    2. Gabriele Micali
    3. Louis Faure
    4. Marco Cosentino Lagomarsino
    5. Sven van Teeffelen

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      How the bacterium E.coli decides when to divide is an interesting, important, unsolved and highly controversial topic of interest to readers across disciplines, including microbiology, cell biology and statistical physics. Popular "single process" models invoke regulation at the step of replication initiation or at the step of cell division per se, whereas these authors have previously proposed a "concurrent cycles" model in which both processes are relevant, with different prominences in different situations. Consistent with the authors' motivating hypothesis, in the particular perturbed condition investigated in this work, a process different from DNA replication becomes increasingly important for division control as the degree of perturbation increases, which provides a new challenge to models for cell division control.

      (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