eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Crosstalk between repair pathways elicits double-strand breaks in alkylated DNA and implications for the action of temozolomide

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Robert P Fuchs
   2. Asako Isogawa
   3. Joao A Paulo
   4. Kazumitsu Onizuka
   5. Tatsuro Takahashi
   6. Ravindra Amunugama
   7. Julien P Duxin
   8. Shingo Fujii

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation summary:

     Glioblastomas, like many tumors, consist of a cohort of actively dividing cells and a substantially larger fraction of non-proliferating cells. The standard of care involves the administration of a chemotherapy drug (temozolomide (TMZ)) whose antitumor activity is thought to be dependent on a toxic intermediate produced during DNA replication. In this report, the authors show how this compound is also processed by the interaction of two DNA repair pathways which produce the same intermediate without the requirement for DNA replication. The paper will be of interest to those scientists concerned with the implications of DNA damage and repair for cancer chemotherapy, particularly for tumors as deadly as glioblastoma.

     (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

2. CA1 pyramidal cell diversity is rooted in the time of neurogenesis

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Davide Cavalieri
   2. Alexandra Angelova
   3. Anas Islah
   4. Catherine Lopez
   5. Marco Bocchio
   6. Yannick Bollmann
   7. Agnès Baude
   8. Rosa Cossart

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study uses the approach of labeling neurons with distinct birthdates so they can be differentiated in experiments performed later in development. The authors then test morphological, functional and circuit inputs/outputs patterns of these neurons by using immunohistochemistry, slice electrophysiology, retrograde labelling, morphological reconstructions and behavioral assays. The manuscript is likely to make a strong impact in the field of developmental neuroscience and a good impact related to more general cellular and molecular neuroscience.

     (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. Naïve individuals promote collective exploration in homing pigeons

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Gabriele Valentini
   2. Theodore P Pavlic
   3. Sara Imari Walker
   4. Stephen C Pratt
   5. Dora Biro
   6. Takao Sasaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study in the field of collective behavior addresses how naïve and experienced individuals (i.e., homing pigeons) pool information in order to navigate while flying back home. The authors show that the passage of information is largely democratic, meaning information passes both ways, and that, unexpectedly, exploration of the route is initiated both by naïve and experienced birds. The work provides a new perspective on information sharing during collective learning.

     (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

4. Deletion of Calsyntenin-3, an atypical cadherin, suppresses inhibitory synapses but increases excitatory parallel-fiber synapses in cerebellum

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Zhihui Liu
   2. Man Jiang
   3. Kif Liakath-Ali
   4. Alessandra Sclip
   5. Jaewon Ko
   6. Roger Shen Zhang
   7. Thomas C Südhof

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study reports that calsyntenin-3, a synaptic adhesion molecule, is expressed in cerebellar Purkinje cells and that acute knockout of calsyntenin-3 increases excitatory synapse density and decreases inhibitory synapse density. The manuscript provides compelling evidence that elimination of calsyntenin-3 from cells in the cerebellar cortex alters the E/I balance for Purkinje cells by increasing the strength of excitatory parallel fiber inputs and decreasing the strength of inhibitory inputs. However, it would have been far better to selectively target Purkinje cells, but that was not done. This is the first study showing that a particular synaptic adhesion molecule regulates excitatory and inhibitory synapse in opposite directions.

     (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. Homo-oligomerization of the human adenosine A2A receptor is driven by the intrinsically disordered C-terminus

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Khanh Dinh Quoc Nguyen
   2. Michael Vigers
   3. Eric Sefah
   4. Susanna Seppälä
   5. Jennifer Paige Hoover
   6. Nicole Star Schonenbach
   7. Blake Mertz
   8. Michelle Ann O'Malley
   9. Songi Han

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The work will be of interest to anyone interested in signal transduction, and especially those studying GPCRs and membrane receptors. Dimerization and oligomerization of G protein-coupled membrane receptors (GPCRs) are expected to be critical for receptor function. This intriguing study helps understand the usually underestimated role of GPCR soluble domains. The authors discovered that oligomerization of a GPCR can be mediated by multiple weak interactions between soluble domains that are "tunable" by environmental factors, thus possibly modulating the function of this important class of membrane receptor proteins. What remains to be shown is how oligomerization alters receptor function.

     (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 name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Stochastic social behavior coupled to COVID-19 dynamics leads to waves, plateaus, and an endemic state

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Alexei V Tkachenko
   2. Sergei Maslov
   3. Tong Wang
   4. Ahmed Elbana
   5. George N Wong
   6. Nigel Goldenfeld

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript will be of interest to epidemiologists and population biologists interested in outbreak dynamics in populations with complex social structures, such as emergent viral infections of humans. The study offers a functional, differential-equation (DE)-based framework for capturing the transition from emergence to endemicity without the huge over-compensation cycles typically predicted by DE models but rarely seen in natural populations. The model framework currently offers insights into the drivers of epidemic dynamics and, after further testing and calibration, may be useful for assessing control strategies for emerging 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 #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Highly contiguous assemblies of 101 drosophilid genomes

   This article has 39 authors:

   1. Bernard Y Kim
   2. Jeremy R Wang
   3. Danny E Miller
   4. Olga Barmina
   5. Emily Delaney
   6. Ammon Thompson
   7. Aaron A Comeault
   8. David Peede
   9. Emmanuel RR D'Agostino
   10. Julianne Pelaez
   11. Jessica M Aguilar
   12. Diler Haji
   13. Teruyuki Matsunaga
   14. Ellie E Armstrong
   15. Molly Zych
   16. Yoshitaka Ogawa
   17. Marina Stamenković-Radak
   18. Mihailo Jelić
   19. Marija Savić Veselinović
   20. Marija Tanasković
   21. Pavle Erić
   22. Jian-Jun Gao
   23. Takehiro K Katoh
   24. Masanori J Toda
   25. Hideaki Watabe
   26. Masayoshi Watada
   27. Jeremy S Davis
   28. Leonie C Moyle
   29. Giulia Manoli
   30. Enrico Bertolini
   31. Vladimír Košťál
   32. R Scott Hawley
   33. Aya Takahashi
   34. Corbin D Jones
   35. Donald K Price
   36. Noah Whiteman
   37. Artyom Kopp
   38. Daniel R Matute
   39. Dmitri A Petrov

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Drosophila species have long served as an important model system for genetics and genomics. The authors have developed an important community resource of high standard genomes for many species across the Drosophila clade. This resource will serve to empower the next generation of Drosophila research and provides an important road map for similar efforts in other groups of 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. A 3D adult zebrafish brain atlas (AZBA) for the digital age

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Justin W Kenney
   2. Patrick E Steadman
   3. Olivia Young
   4. Meng Ting Shi
   5. Maris Polanco
   6. Saba Dubaishi
   7. Kristopher Covert
   8. Thomas Mueller
   9. Paul W Frankland

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The authors present the first digital adult zebrafish brain anatomy atlas that includes ten highly informative markers for different brain regions and cell types. The authors utilize new clearing techniques to enable staining of the whole fixed zebrafish adult brains, and light sheet microscopy fluorescent imaging to obtain high resolution three-dimensional data. Several individual dataset for each marker are registered and aligned to an anatomical model using fluorescent cell nuclei and autofluorescence patterns by state of the art volume registration algorithms. The results appear to be of high quality. The authors also provide a detailed and state-of-the-art anatomical annotation of brain regions. Using ten different antibodies to fluorescently label different neuron types, stem cells and glia, proliferation zones, and some specific anatomical regions, the authors demonstrate the utility of their database. This will be a valuable resource for neurobiology research in zebrafish.

     (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. Control of spinal motor neuron terminal differentiation through sustained Hoxc8 gene activity

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Catarina Catela
   2. Yihan Chen
   3. Yifei Weng
   4. Kailong Wen
   5. Paschalis Kratsios

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript will be of interest to developmental geneticists interested in neuroscience, as it demonstrates how spinal motor neurons maintain their unique identities in adulthood after fate decisions are made in the embryo. The work here suggests that a Hox transcription factor acts as a terminal selector to control motor neuron identity, thus mirroring recent studies in C. elegans, and pointing towards this type of gene regulation as important in building diverse nervous 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. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Structure-guided microbial targeting of antistaphylococcal prodrugs

    This article has 14 authors:

    1. Justin J Miller
    2. Ishaan T Shah
    3. Jayda Hatten
    4. Yasaman Barekatain
    5. Elizabeth A Mueller
    6. Ahmed M Moustafa
    7. Rachel L Edwards
    8. Cynthia S Dowd
    9. Geoffrey C Hoops
    10. R Jeremy Johnson
    11. Paul J Planet
    12. Florian L Muller
    13. Joseph M Jez
    14. Audrey R Odom John

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This submission reports an approach to identify bacterial specific carboxyesterases that can be exploited to activate prodrugs of antibiotics in Staphylococcus aureus. The main premise is that charged functional groups found in some antibiotics prevent entry of these into bacteria, an effect that can be circumvented through esterification of the antibiotic to allow entry. Thereafter, activation of the antibiotic will occur in the bacterial cytoplasm through hydrolysis by bacterial esterases. This could lead to new antibiotic delivery strategies.

      (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