eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Stronger net selection on males across animals

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Lennart Winkler
   2. Maria Moiron
   3. Edward H Morrow
   4. Tim Janicke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study addresses an interesting and important question in evolutionary biology: how does the variance in fitness (components) vary between the sexes? In particular, it aims to evaluate whether there is a larger sex difference in systems with strong sexual selection. This study will be of considerable interest to researchers working on sexual coevolution and the role of sexual selection in promoting adaptation. However, there are some concerns regarding the limitations of the data and methods in support of 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. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

2. High-speed, three-dimensional imaging reveals chemotactic behaviour specific to human-infective Leishmania parasites

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Rachel C Findlay
   2. Mohamed Osman
   3. Kirstin A Spence
   4. Paul M Kaye
   5. Pegine B Walrad
   6. Laurence G Wilson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study utilizes holographic microscopy to study the swimming behaviour of flagellated forms of Leishmania mexicana in the presence or absence of host cell stimuli. Infective metacyclic promastigotes were found to swim faster than actively dividing procyclic promastigotes and to display different average trajectories. The swimming trajectories of these parasite stages were also altered in the presence of macrophages, promoting chemotaxis towards target host cells. The findings provide new insights into promastigote flagellar function and role of swimming behaviour in promoting pathogenesis.

     (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. Structural heterogeneity of cellular K5/K14 filaments as revealed by cryo-electron microscopy

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Miriam S Weber
   2. Matthias Eibauer
   3. Suganya Sivagurunathan
   4. Thomas M Magin
   5. Robert D Goldman
   6. Ohad Medalia

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This work combines 2D and 3D cryo-electron microscopy to show that cellular keratin intermediate filaments have heterogenous diameter, protofilament number and protofilament arrangement. This demonstrates the challenge for future high resolution structure determination of these essential filaments as well as providing the basis for understanding how this heterogeneity facilitates their 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 names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Developmental changes in story-evoked responses in the neocortex and hippocampus

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Samantha S Cohen
   2. Nim Tottenham
   3. Christopher Baldassano

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Cohen and Baldassano present analyses of a large publicly available set of neuroimaging data from children and adolescents watching an animated movie, and is likely be of interest to neuroscientists interested in methods for analyzing naturalistic neuroimaging data, or those interested in the development of narrative processing in the brain. The results are not embedded in a strong theoretical framework and it is not yet clear which hypotheses are supported and which are refuted. However, the methodological approach developed here is a valuable addition to the repertoire of developmental 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, Reviewer #2 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Tiled-ClickSeq for targeted sequencing of complete coronavirus genomes with simultaneous capture of RNA recombination and minority variants

   This article has 24 authors:

   1. Elizabeth Jaworski
   2. Rose M Langsjoen
   3. Brooke Mitchell
   4. Barbara Judy
   5. Patrick Newman
   6. Jessica A Plante
   7. Kenneth S Plante
   8. Aaron L Miller
   9. Yiyang Zhou
   10. Daniele Swetnam
   11. Stephanea Sotcheff
   12. Victoria Morris
   13. Nehad Saada
   14. Rafael RG Machado
   15. Allan McConnell
   16. Steven G Widen
   17. Jill Thompson
   18. Jianli Dong
   19. Ping Ren
   20. Rick B Pyles
   21. Thomas G Ksiazek
   22. Vineet D Menachery
   23. Scott C Weaver
   24. Andrew L Routh

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The ability to fully resolve the whole genome of viral pathogens is often hampered by a multitude of different obstacles, one of which is optimally amplifying different regions of the genome. Part of this challenge lies in designing the best primers pairs that can consistently amplify PCR products despite the presence of changes (mutations) in the genome. The work described by Jaworski and colleagues can potentially provide an alternative approach that does not depend on primer pairs to fully sequence one such viral pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, and can also be applied towards other viral families.

     (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, ScreenIT

6. Role of the transcriptional regulator SP140 in resistance to bacterial infections via repression of type I interferons

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Daisy X Ji
   2. Kristen C Witt
   3. Dmitri I Kotov
   4. Shally R Margolis
   5. Alexander Louie
   6. Victoria Chevée
   7. Katherine J Chen
   8. Moritz M Gaidt
   9. Harmandeep S Dhaliwal
   10. Angus Y Lee
   11. Stephen L Nishimura
   12. Dario S Zamboni
   13. Igor Kramnik
   14. Daniel A Portnoy
   15. K Heran Darwin
   16. Russell E Vance

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Understanding genes that control susceptibility to infection is critically important. In this manuscript Ji et al. identify the gene SP140 as the driving mutation resulting in susceptibility to a range of bacterial pathogens located within the severe susceptibility to tuberculosis (SST1) in mice. While our understanding of how SP140 functions remains unknown, the identification of a single gene within this locus that regulates Type I IFN is impactful and will be of broad interest for immunologists and microbiologists alike.

     (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

7. The role of higher-order thalamus during learning and correct performance in goal-directed behavior

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Danilo La Terra
   2. Ann-Sofie Bjerre
   3. Marius Rosier
   4. Rei Masuda
   5. Tomás J Ryan
   6. Lucy M Palmer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study, which will be of interest to neuroscientists in the fields of learning and memory, somatosensation, and motor behavior, uses systems neuroscience tools to expand our view how the postero-medial (POm) nucleus of the thalamus contributes to goal-directed behavior. The reviewers suggested additional ontogenetic experiments to clarify the nature and specificity of those roles. They also indicated that certain alternative explanations to the experimental observations could be addressed for a more balanced presentation and interpretation of the 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. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Whole brain correlates of individual differences in skin conductance responses during discriminative fear conditioning to social cues

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Kevin Vinberg
   2. Jörgen Rosén
   3. Granit Kastrati
   4. Fredrik Ahs

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Vinbert et al. provide a conceptual replication on individual differences in conditioned skin conductance response during fear acquisition training and BOLD fMRI in a large sample (N=285) of healthy individuals (mono- and dizygotic twins). The authors report results that are in line with previous work and new results from a whole-brain analysis and suggest unique and shared contributions of individual brain regions. This is a timely and well-conducted replication study, the sample size is large for this area, and there are robustness (multiverse) analyses in place to ensure that findings are not driven by particular analysis choices.

     (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. Discovery and characterization of Hv1-type proton channels in reef-building corals

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Gisela Rangel-Yescas
   2. Cecilia Cervantes
   3. Miguel A Cervantes-Rocha
   4. Esteban Suárez-Delgado
   5. Anastazia T Banaszak
   6. Ernesto Maldonado
   7. Ian Scott Ramsey
   8. Tamara Rosenbaum
   9. Leon D Islas

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper will be of interest both to marine biologists and to biophysicists studying voltage-gated proton channels. It describes cloning and full biophysical characterization of the first ion channel ever identified in reef-building coral species, and develops a mechanistic model for understanding regulation of voltage-gated proton channels.

     (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. Genetic depletion studies inform receptor usage by virulent hantaviruses in human endothelial cells

    This article has 10 authors:

    1. Maria Eugenia Dieterle
    2. Carles Solà-Riera
    3. Chunyan Ye
    4. Samuel M Goodfellow
    5. Eva Mittler
    6. Ezgi Kasikci
    7. Steven B Bradfute
    8. Jonas Klingström
    9. Rohit K Jangra
    10. Kartik Chandran

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This is a well-performed study that defines the role of purported host cell receptors in the entry of hantaviruses into human endothelial cells. This is an important study as it applies CRISPR-mediated deletion studies for candidate receptors in the same endothelial cell line (TIME).

      (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