eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. DCC regulates astroglial development essential for telencephalic morphogenesis and corpus callosum formation

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Laura Morcom
   2. Ilan Gobius
   3. Ashley PL Marsh
   4. Rodrigo Suárez
   5. Jonathan WC Lim
   6. Caitlin Bridges
   7. Yunan Ye
   8. Laura R Fenlon
   9. Yvrick Zagar
   10. Amelia M Douglass
   11. Amber-Lee S Donahoo
   12. Thomas Fothergill
   13. Samreen Shaikh
   14. Peter Kozulin
   15. Timothy J Edwards
   16. Helen M Cooper
   17. IRC5 Consortium
   18. Elliott H Sherr
   19. Alain Chédotal
   20. Richard J Leventer
   21. Paul J Lockhart
   22. Linda J Richards

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: This study is a welcome follow-up to your earlier demonstration that midline zipper glia (MZG) migrate along the interhemispheric fissure (IHF) and intercalate across the hemispheres, and in doing so, remodel the meningeal basement membrane to provide a substrate for callosal axon growth. The authors identify DCC and its ligand Netrin1 to be important for this process, by acting on the distribution and morphology of MZG, in addition to their service as axon guidance signals for callosal axons to be attracted to and across the midline.

     Co-submission with https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.29.227827v1

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Continuous psychophysics shows millisecond-scale visual processing delays are faithfully preserved in movement dynamics

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Johannes Burge
   2. Lawrence K. Cormack

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: All three reviewers agreed that the paper lacked new biological insights. Two reviewers also raised concerns about the very low number of participants. The novelty of the task is also somewhat overstated; using tracking with different displays and varying luminance to each eye is certainly novel and enterprising, but visuomotor tracking per se is not novel, as pointed out by the reviewers.

     That said, all reviewers found that the manuscript presented an interesting way to study this system, and the methods are promising given the careful and thorough recapitulation of previous results using this technique. The paper is well written, and the application of the tracking method to this specific question interesting. Reviewer #1 raised a number of subtle but not insurmountable technical issues.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Identification of Gli1 as a progenitor cell marker for meniscus development and injury repair

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Yulong Wei
   2. Hao Sun
   3. Tao Gui
   4. Lutian Yao
   5. Leilei Zhong
   6. Wei Yu
   7. Su-Jin Heo
   8. Lin Han
   9. X. Sherry Liu
   10. Yejia Zhang
   11. Eiki Koyama
   12. Fanxin Long
   13. Miltiadis Zgonis
   14. Robert L Mauck
   15. Jaimo Ahn
   16. Ling Qin

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Migration without interbreeding: Evolutionary history of a highly selfing Mediterranean grass inferred from whole genomes

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Christoph Stritt
   2. Elena L. Gimmi
   3. Michele Wyler
   4. Abdelmonaim H. Bakali
   5. Aleksandra Skalska
   6. Robert Hasterok
   7. Luis A. J. Mur
   8. Nicola Pecchioni
   9. Anne C. Roulin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: This paper has several strengths. It addresses Brachypodium distachyon population genetics and demography to help understand phenomena that have been investigated in less data-rich papers before. The authors do so with whole-genome sequencing of both a pre-existing global collection and additional "gap-filling" sampling. Analyses have been conducted using best practices, and most of the conclusions reflect the data and analyses presented.

     Major findings include the existence of large-scale population structure with three distinct lineages, discordance between geographical occurrence and genetic relatedness (clades within the lineages), and at shorter geographic scales, signs of dispersal without interbreeding. These patterns are explained by a combination of near-complete selfing and seed dispersal.

     The work attempts to cover a lot of ground, including selfing, seed dispersal, coalescence theory, microevolution, plasticity and frequency dependent selection, all mentioned in the abstract. The presentation would probably benefit from focusing on one or two aspects and making a stronger case for them.

     The reviewers noted that studies of this kind will often be descriptive due to the largely untestable nature of complex hypotheses of historical dispersal and evolution. Direct empirical testing of some of the hypotheses put forward here would require substantial experimental work (e.g. measuring the fitness of artificial hybrids to demonstrate post-zygotic reproductive isolation). As a first pass, simulations would likely suffice to test whether processes such as drift, selfing, and founder effects are sufficient to explain the population structure, or whether more complex processes such as frequency-dependent selection or reproductive isolation need to be invoked.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Kinesin-4 KIF21B limits microtubule growth to allow rapid centrosome polarization in T cells

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Peter Jan Hooikaas
   2. Hugo GJ Damstra
   3. Oane J Gros
   4. Wilhelmina E van Riel
   5. Maud Martin
   6. Yesper TH Smits
   7. Jorg van Loosdregt
   8. Lukas C Kapitein
   9. Florian Berger
   10. Anna Akhmanova

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: This is a very interesting study addressing the question of microtubule cytoskeleton reorganization in the immunological synapse. Specifically, the work demonstrates the contribution of KIF21B for the control of the T cell microtubule (MT) network required for T cell polarization during immunological synapse formation. The authors use a variety of microscopy techniques, including expansion microscopy, controlled perturbations of the cell, and computer simulations to generate their results. The authors show that knockout of KIF21B results in longer MTs that result in an inability to polarise the MT network by a mechanism consistent with dynein motor function at the immunological synapse to capture long MTs and center the MT aster at the synapse. They use the Jurkat cell line, which is a classical model for this step in immune synapse function and fully appropriate. They show that KIF21B-GFP can rescue the knockout phenotype and then use this as a way to follow KIF12B dynamics in the Jurkat cells. KIF21B works by inducing pausing and catastrophe, thus, more MTs are shorter when present. They also rescue the defect in the KIF21B KOs with 0.5 nM vinblastine, that directly increases catastrophes, shortens the MTs and restores MT network polarization to the synapse. As a functional surrogate they investigate lysosome positioning at the synapse, which is one of the proposed functions of this cytoskeletal polarization. The use of expansion microscopy in this system is relatively new and clearly very powerful. The modelling component adds to the story and supports the sliding model proposed by Poenie and colleagues in 2006, but cannot say that there is no component of end capture and shrinkage as proposed by Hammer and colleagues more recently. Experiments and modelling are performed to a high standard and the results advance the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Intensity coded octopaminergic modulation of aversive crawling behavior in Drosophila melanogaster larvae

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Florian Bilz
   2. Madeleine-Marie Gilles
   3. Adriana Schatton
   4. Hans-Joachim Pflüger
   5. Marco Schubert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: This manuscript addresses an interesting question of how octopaminergic neurons regulate locomotor rhythms. Despite the interesting topic, the reviewers raised technical and mechanistic concerns that need to be addressed.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. SARS-CoV-2 S protein:ACE2 interaction reveals novel allosteric targets

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Palur V Raghuvamsi
   2. Nikhil K Tulsian
   3. Firdaus Samsudin
   4. Xinlei Qian
   5. Kiren Purushotorman
   6. Gu Yue
   7. Mary M Kozma
   8. Wong Y Hwa
   9. Julien Lescar
   10. Peter J Bond
   11. Paul A MacAry
   12. Ganesh S Anand

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: This is a timely and interesting exploration of the interaction between the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ACE2 receptor using hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry and molecular dynamics simulations. The Spike protein consists of two sub-domains S1 and S2 with the S1 needing to be cleaved-off so the S2 can become the fusion protein responsible for getting the SARS-CoV-2 into the cell. Structures are available but they do not shed light on how the protease furin can access the cleavage site between S1 and S2 in order to begin the process of fusion. The results suggest that the Spike-ACE2 interaction induces extremely long-range allosteric effects on the Spike protein that could trigger proteolysis of the Spike protein. Specifically, when ACE2 binds to the Spike protein, a conformational change occurs near the S1/S2 cleavage site, exposing it and likely making it more susceptible to furin cleavage. The binding also dampens exchange in the stalk region of the Spike protein. The authors refer to these regions as "dynamic hotspots in the pre-fusion state". The results of this work have implications for the development of small molecule inhibitors.

     In general, the work is timely, and the results will be of interest to many in the field. The major conclusions of the work are generally supported by the results.

   Reviewed by eLife, ScreenIT

8. Bundle-specific associations between white matter microstructure and Aβ and tau pathology at their connecting cortical endpoints in older adults at risk of Alzheimer’s disease

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Alexa Pichet Binette
   2. Guillaume Theaud
   3. François Rheault
   4. Maggie Roy
   5. D. Louis Collins
   6. John C.S. Breitner
   7. Judes Poirier
   8. Maxime Descoteaux
   9. Sylvia Villeneuve
   10. for the PREVENT-AD Research Group

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: As you will find below, all three reviewers provided very positive technical reviews - there was a strong consensus that this is a well-executed study. The reviewers highlighted the large cohort of participants, the innovative and versatile use of neuroimaging techniques, and in particular the water-corrected diffusion and tau-PET measures, and the careful analysis. While we acknowledge these methodological strengths, we found it difficult to agree on the validity of the interpretation of the findings, considering the unexpected directionality of the results. In addition, we felt that without additional proof-of-concept (e.g. longitudinal study), the current experimental design does not provide sufficient evidence for an early brain pathology marker. However, it was agreed that the study provides a clear advancement relative to other studies looking at the relationship between different imaging domains in AD. As such, the present findings should be particularly valuable for an audience interested in white-matter pathology in neurodegenerative diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Asymmetric Functional Gradients in the Human Subcortex

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Xavier Guell
   2. Jeremy D Schmahmann
   3. John DE Gabrieli
   4. Satrajit S Ghosh
   5. Maiya R Geddes

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: This study investigates asymmetry in functional gradients in human thalamus, striatum and cerebellum. The authors found that the thalamus and the pallidum of the lenticular nucleus have strongly asymmetric principal functional gradients across the two hemispheres. In the case of the caudate and cerebellum, their 2nd and 3rd gradients were asymmetric. In general, the reviewers and editors found the study to be intriguing, but ultimately, felt that the dichotomous model, while interesting, was too speculative with no direct evidence presented. Considering also the lack of results on the functional significance of the asymmetries, the editors and reviewers felt that the study is better suited for a more specialized audience.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Extreme suction attachment performance from specialised insects living in mountain streams (Diptera: Blephariceridae)

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Victor Kang
    2. Robin T White
    3. Simon Chen
    4. Walter Federle

    Reviewed by eLife