eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Ex vivo observation of granulocyte activity during thrombus formation

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Daria S. Morozova
   2. Alexey A. Martyanov
   3. Sergei I. Obydennyi
   4. Julia-Jessica D. Korobkin
   5. Alexey V. Sokolov
   6. Ekaterina V. Shamova
   7. Irina V. Gorudko
   8. Anna L. Khoreva
   9. Anna Shcherbina
   10. Mikhail A. Panteleev
   11. Anastasia N. Sveshnikova

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: Specifically, the proposed model system is valuable to study ex vivo the infiltration of the growing thrombus by granulocytes using fluorescent microscopy. In addition, this system has the potential to facilitate investigations on the role of granulocytes in thrombus growth and immune-thrombosis. Granulocytes have been classified into two different types based on their DiOC6 staining pattern, namely, type A with uniform DiOC6 and type B with cluster-like DiOC6. However, it remains unclear if the staining pattern is homogeneously so clear-cut and if the type A and B granulocytes are in addition defined by their velocity. Granulocyte activation process by "priming agents" has to be validated and the rationale for using the chosen agents needs to be provided. Finally, better-defined controls for the part of the paper dedicated to the synergistic effect between granulocytes and platelets during thrombus growth are necessary. Because in the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) granulocyte motility as well as platelet number and function are impaired, blood from patients with WAS is not an appropriate control for this study. For example, for the control experiments, the following controls might be used in replacement of WAS blood: (1) blood from thrombocytopenic patients or platelet-depleted blood and (2) blood in which granulocyte mobility/activation is inhibited. Finally, it would be interesting to see if neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) develop in this model system.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Gene expression has more power for predicting in vitro cancer cell vulnerabilities than genomics

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Joshua M. Dempster
   2. John M. Krill-Burger
   3. James M. McFarland
   4. Allison Warren
   5. Jesse S. Boehm
   6. Francisca Vazquez
   7. William C. Hahn
   8. Todd R. Golub
   9. Aviad Tsherniak

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: The authors propose a new approach to the derivation of cancer signatures and compare the relative impact of gene expression data with respect to other variables, particularly SVN and CVNs. The simplicity of the idea and of the technical approach, to the point of singling out a single gene predictive value, is a positive aspect. There are also critical aspects that will require substantial revision including the underlying influence of tissue specific genes. Overall, the paper provides a good basis for the generation of specific hypotheses that can be followed by additional validation studies at the computational and/or experimental level.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Reinstatement of Cortical Outcome Representations during Higher-Order Learning

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Lennart Luettgau
   2. Emanuele Porcu
   3. Claus Tempelmann
   4. Gerhard Jocham

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: All reviewers agreed that the neural mechanisms by which value is conferred to stimuli that were never directly paired with reinforcement is an important topic. However, individual reviewers raised questions regarding the study design and data analysis. In particular, reviewers agreed it was not clear how you could distinguish BOLD responses to CS1 and CS2 given the temporal proximity of their presentation. They also wondered whether the current results would provide enough advance beyond previous work.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Asprosin Neutralizing Antibodies as a Treatment for Metabolic Syndrome

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Ila Mishra
   2. Clemens Duerrschmid
   3. Zhiqiang Ku
   4. Wei Xie
   5. Elizabeth Sabath Silva
   6. Jennifer Hoffmann
   7. Wei Xin
   8. Ningyan Zhang
   9. Zhiqiang An
   10. Atul R. Chopra

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: Mishra et al. present data characterizing the effect of asprosin neutralizing antibodies on the parameters of metabolic syndrome (weight, glucose, lipids, etc). This group were the initial discoverers and characterized asprosin as a hormone that increases blood sugar and stimulates appetite. In their Nature Medicine 2017 article they also present data on a neutralizing antibody. In this follow-up manuscript the group characterizes the impact of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies on metabolic parameters of three mouse models of obesity (DIO, NASH diet and Leptin receptor knockout). The translational focus of the manuscript is potential use of monoclonal antibodies against aprosin as a treatment of metabolic syndrome.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Frontal cortical regions associated with attention connect more strongly to central than peripheral V1

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Sara A. Sims
   2. Pinar Demirayak
   3. Simone Cedotal
   4. Kristina M. Visscher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: The manuscript is a replication of findings from Griffis et al., 2017, and it seeks to validate those findings using a different modality (diffusion-weighted imaging; DWI). While the questions asked in this manuscript are of considerable interest to the field, the findings' focus and implications are relatively narrow. Further, the study does not reveal new conclusions about brain function or organization. Authors may be cautious about interpreting the findings as representing direct structural connections between the occipital and frontal cortex -- as the reported structural and functional connectivity values may not be strong enough to support such a strong interpretation. The reviewers also agree that the methods are not presented clearly, in a manner that is straightforward to follow and critique.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Structural characterization of the ANTAR antiterminator domain bound to RNA

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. James L Walshe
   2. Rezwan Siddiquee
   3. Karishma Patel
   4. Sandro F Ataide

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: The reviewers were excited by the structural data, and felt that the structure represents an important advance in our understanding of ANTAR domain proteins. Nonetheless, while the reviewers found the proposed model of ANTAR regulation to be interesting, they raised concerns about the limited evidence in support of this model. In addition to the suggestions in the individual reviews, the authors thought the model could be tested using mutagenesis together with an in vivo or in vitro reporter system, and/or by structural studies of nascent transcripts in transcription complexes with EutV.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Starburst amacrine cells amplify optogenetic visual restoration through gap junctions

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yusaku Katada
   2. Hiromitsu Kunimi
   3. Naho Serizawa
   4. Deokho Lee
   5. Kenta Kobayashi
   6. Kazuno Negishi
   7. Hideyuki Okano
   8. Kenji F. Tanaka
   9. Kazuo Tsubota
   10. Toshihide Kurihara

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Adaptive evolution of nontransitive fitness in yeast

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Sean W Buskirk
   2. Alecia B Rokes
   3. Gregory I Lang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: The findings presented in this manuscript are interesting. They show that selection is happening at multiple scales - among viruses within a cell - and between their host cells within a population. The conflict between these levels of selection results in evolved populations that are less fit than the ancestors. This work demonstrates that evolution may not be a simple linear march of progress. Rather, progress over short time scales can sometimes lead to a reduction of fitness over the longer time scale due to the evolution of ecological interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. DRAXIN regulates interhemispheric fissure remodelling to influence the extent of corpus callosum formation

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Laura Morcom
   2. Timothy J Edwards
   3. Eric Rider
   4. Dorothy Jones-Davis
   5. Jonathan WC Lim
   6. Kok-Siong Chen
   7. Ryan J Dean
   8. Jens Bunt
   9. Yunan Ye
   10. Ilan Gobius
   11. Rodrigo Suárez
   12. Simone Mandelstam
   13. Elliott H Sherr
   14. Linda J Richards

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     Summary: Your manuscript is an excellent account of the cellular and genetic mechanisms involved in the diversity of corpus callosum dysgenesis (CCD) phenotypes in humans and in a mouse model. Your work over the years has revealed that interhemispheric fissure (IHF) fusion is critical for proper formation of the callosum and its failure is the main cause of complete CCD. Here you nicely show that the extent of aberrant interhemispheric fissure (IHF) remodeling does in fact correlate with commissure dysgenesis severity, in inbred and outcrossed BTBR mouse strains, as well as in humans with partial CCD. The phenotypes in the mouse are very similar to what is found in humans, and also variable, perhaps related to stochasticity on the mechanisms involved, or to the dependency on other allelic variants.

     You also identify an eight base pair deletion in Draxin and misregulated astroglial and leptomeningeal proliferation as genetic and cellular factors for variable IHF remodelling and CCD in BTBR acallosal strains. The Draxin mutations interrupt the normal remodeling (closing) of interhemispheric fissure necessary for callosal axons to cross. Your study thus places the focus on midline cellular populations and away from axonal navigation as the main source of corpus callosum dysgenesis. The findings are important to understand what mutations cause CCD in humans and how, mechanistically, it occurs.

     This manuscript was co-submitted with https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.233593v1

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Flagellar energetics from high-resolution imaging of beating patterns in tethered mouse sperm

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Ashwin Nandagiri
    2. Avinash Satish Gaikwad
    3. David L Potter
    4. Reza Nosrati
    5. Julio Soria
    6. Moira K O'Bryan
    7. Sameer Jadhav
    8. Ranganathan Prabhakar

    Reviewed by eLife