eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Giant ankyrin-B mediates transduction of axon guidance and collateral branch pruning factor sema 3A

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Blake A Creighton
   2. Simone Afriyie
   3. Deepa Ajit
   4. Cristine R Casingal
   5. Kayleigh M Voos
   6. Joan Reger
   7. April M Burch
   8. Eric Dyne
   9. Julia Bay
   10. Jeffrey K Huang
   11. ES Anton
   12. Meng-Meng Fu
   13. Damaris N Lorenzo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This paper addresses the mechanisms regulating cytoskeletal changes mediating neuronal branching and axon growth. The authors assess the role of the scaffolding protein giant ankyrin B in cortical neuron differentiation and present strong data implicating ankyrin B functions with the cell adhesion molecule/Sema3A receptor complex and an actin severing protein. With a better explanation of the function of ankyrin B in the Sema3A signaling pathway, this manuscript will be of interest to cell biologists and developmental neurobiologists working to uncover the biological mechanisms of early circuit development, and how these mechanisms relate to autism spectrum disorders.

     (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. Fast and slow feedforward inhibitory circuits for cortical odor processing

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Norimitsu Suzuki
   2. Malinda LS Tantirigama
   3. K Phyu Aung
   4. Helena HY Huang
   5. John M Bekkers

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Feedforward inhibition (FFI) typically exerts a powerful effect shaping neural activity. In this paper, Suzuki et al use a combination of in vivo and in vitro experiments to characterize, for the first time, responses in the two main classes of FFIs in the mouse olfactory cortex, neurogliaform cells (NG) and horizontal cells (HZ). They find that these two cell types have different responses and different connectivity, which partially explains their different responses. This paper also helps resolve a previously perplexing result from a recent high-profile publication that claimed that FFI in the mouse olfactory cortex appears to play a negligible role in shaping cortical odor responses, presumably because those authors were only recording from HZ 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

3. Sequence and structural conservation reveal fingerprint residues in TRP channels

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Deny Cabezas-Bratesco
   2. Francisco A Mcgee
   3. Charlotte K Colenso
   4. Kattina Zavala
   5. Daniele Granata
   6. Vincenzo Carnevale
   7. Juan C Opazo
   8. Sebastian E Brauchi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) cation channels, related to voltage-gated channels, appeared before plants and animals diverged in evolution and expanded in vertebrates into seven major subfamilies and took multiple essential physiological functions encoding chemical and physical information into electrical signals. In this manuscript, Deny Cabezas-Bratesco and co-workers draw from multiple sequence alignments and available structural information to identify highly conserved features in the transmembrane domains across several major TRP subfamilies in vertebrate and invertebrate animals and even in unicellular organisms. By systematically analyzing their findings, the authors propose a structural framework hinting at common mechanisms utilized by TRP channels to integrate stimuli into electric signals, which has major implications for a wide range of biological processes where TRP channels play a role.

     (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. Human B cell lineages associated with germinal centers following influenza vaccination are measurably evolving

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Kenneth B Hoehn
   2. Jackson S Turner
   3. Frederick I Miller
   4. Ruoyi Jiang
   5. Oliver G Pybus
   6. Ali H Ellebedy
   7. Steven H Kleinstein

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     The manuscript by Hoehn et al use a novel approach to quantify the somatic evolution in B cells. It brings together existing datasets to investigate the evidence for detectable evolution across longitudinal samples of BCR repertoires. This work provides significant new insight into which stimuli induce effective immune responses, and has the potential to improve vaccine design. Notably, these results are of interest for characterizing B cell responses, especially to vaccinations that induce a poor immune response, such as influenza.

     (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. STAT3-mediated allelic imbalance of novel genetic variant Rs1047643 and B-cell-specific super-enhancer in association with systemic lupus erythematosus

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Yanfeng Zhang
   2. Kenneth Day
   3. Devin M Absher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     Zhang and colleagues have conduced extensive multi-omic data analyses and functional assays, aiming to identify novel risk variants and to then explore the potential mechanisms with which the identified variants mediate risk of systemic lupus erythematosus. The findings could advance the understanding of the genetic susceptibility and biology of systemic lupus erythematosus.

     (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. Maturation of persistent and hyperpolarization-activated inward currents shapes the differential activation of motoneuron subtypes during postnatal development

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Simon A Sharples
   2. Gareth B Miles

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript will be of interest to those studying the neuroscience of movement, as it addresses a fundamental aspect of movement: motoneuron recruitment. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of motoneuron intrinsic properties that mature in the early post-natal period in mice and may lead to differentiation into "slow" and "fast" phenotypes. The authors argue that these properties, studied in spinal cord slices, contribute to motoneuron recruitment. While the study provides insights on the maturation of electrophysiological properties in motoneuron subtypes, the claims related to ionic mechanisms involved in orderly recruitment require further justification.

     (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

7. Glial Nrf2 signaling mediates the neuroprotection exerted by Gastrodia elata Blume in Lrrk2-G2019S Parkinson’s disease

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Yu-En Lin
   2. Chin-Hsien Lin
   3. En-Peng Ho
   4. Yi-Ci Ke
   5. Stavroula Petridi
   6. Christopher JH Elliott
   7. Lee-Yan Sheen
   8. Cheng-Ting Chien

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study elucidates the molecular mechanisms whereby Gastrodia elata Blume confers neuroprotection in G2019S-induced PD models and provides a potential therapeutic treatment for PD patients. The experiments are very well designed; the images are of high-quality and convincing. The conclusions are well supported by multiple of lines of genetic and biochemical evidence. This is an important and innovative study.

     (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. Activity in perirhinal and entorhinal cortex predicts perceived visual similarities among category exemplars with highest precision

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Kayla M Ferko
   2. Anna Blumenthal
   3. Chris B Martin
   4. Daria Proklova
   5. Alexander N Minos
   6. Lisa M Saksida
   7. Timothy J Bussey
   8. Ali R Khan
   9. Stefan Köhler

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This study examines the degree to which idiosyncrasies in visual object representations (beyond just image-driven objective representations) exist in visual areas of the brain. The authors report that later stages of the visual processing stream (specifically involving the perirhinal cortex and parts of the entorhinal cortex) do show these idiosyncratic representations, and for all levels of similarity (even for distinguishing very highly similar stimuli). These findings are interesting to vision scientists working to understand the role of different regions within the visual processing stream and to memory scientists interested in how this visual input is transformed in medial temporal lobe regions.

     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

9. Allosteric cooperation in β-lactam binding to a non-classical transpeptidase

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Nazia Ahmad
   2. Sanmati Dugad
   3. Varsha Chauhan
   4. Shubbir Ahmed
   5. Kunal Sharma
   6. Sangita Kachhap
   7. Rana Zaidi
   8. William R Bishai
   9. Gyanu Lamichhane
   10. Pankaj Kumar

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Evaluation Summary:

     This manuscript reports high-resolution crystallographic structures of the L,D, transpeptidase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These structures were obtained with ligands (a sugar molecule and a beta-lactam). A surprising finding is that the enzyme contains a ligand-binding site located greater than 20 Å away from the catalytic site. The authors propose and provide some evidence for an allosteric role of the new ligand site (S-pocket), which would be significant because it could allow new ways of targeting the protein for inhibition. While enthusiasm is high for the discovery of a putative allosteric site, more rigorous computation is necessary, along with some biochemical investigations and mutagenesis studies to rule out the possibility of a different role for the S-site. Moreover, a better articulation of the connection/crosstalk between the two sites in the form of a mechanistic hypothesis would strengthen 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 #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

   Reviewed by eLife

10. ExSTED microscopy reveals contrasting functions of dopamine and somatostatin CSF-c neurons along the lamprey central canal

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Elham Jalalvand
    2. Jonatan Alvelid
    3. Giovanna Coceano
    4. Steven Edwards
    5. Brita Robertson
    6. Sten Grillner
    7. Ilaria Testa

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      Evaluation Summary:

      This manuscript is of broad interest for the neuroscience and imaging community. The authors employ an array of advanced imaging techniques to bridge the understanding of neuronal function in whole organisms to the sub-cellular physiology of specific neuronal types. The microscopical observations, combined with system perturbations strongly support the claims.

      (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