eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Behavioural and neurogenetic evidence for emotion primitives in the fruit fly Drosophila: insights from the Open Field Test

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yi Lueningschroer-Wang
   2. Emilia Derksen
   3. Maria Steigmeier
   4. Christian Wegener

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study reports findings that support the use of the Open Field Test in Drosophila as a model to study "emotion-like states", which are behavioral responses to several stressful or aversive treatments, and resilience upon their subsequent removal. Behavioral data, by employing established stress-causing treatments and genetic manipulations, are solid. While the results and conceptual framework of this work will be of interest to behaviorists regardless of animal models, the novelty of this work over previous studies could have been clearer.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Designing biochemical circuits with tree search

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Pranav S Bhamidipati
   2. Matthew Thomson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript presents a valuable computational tool for identifying 3-5 gene regulatory network topologies capable of generating oscillatory dynamics. The application of Monte Carlo Tree Search to circuit design is novel and effectively expands the scale at which non-linear behaviours can be explored in silico. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is convincing, and the work will be of interest to the systems and synthetic biology communities. While the evolutionary implications remain unclear, the methodological contribution represents a significant advance in the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Cross-species standardised cortico-subcortical tractography

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Stephania Assimopoulos
   2. Shaun Warrington
   3. Davide Folloni
   4. Katherine Bryant
   5. Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad
   6. Wei Tang
   7. Saad Jbabdi
   8. Sarah R Heilbronner
   9. Rogier B Mars
   10. Stamatios N Sotiropoulos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides a novel approach for delineating subcortical-cortical white matter bundles. The authors provide convincing evidence by harnessing state-of-the-art methods and cross-species data. Together, this effort will be of interest to scientists across multiple subfields and accelerate progress in a biologically critical but methodologically challenging area.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Fifteenth century CE Bolivian maize reveals genetic affinities with ancient Peruvian maize

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Huan Chen
   2. Amy Baetsen-Young
   3. Addie Thompson
   4. Brad Day
   5. Thelma Madzima
   6. Sally Wasef
   7. Claudia Rivera Casanovas
   8. William Lovis
   9. Gabriel Wrobel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study attempts to place an ancient maize sample from Bolivia, dated to the end of the Incan empire, in genetic and geographical context. The analyses show that this sample is most closely related to ancient Peruvian maize, but the data remain inadequate to determine the direction of dispersal and the extent of Inca influence over the genetic make up of the analyzed sample. There are additional deficiencies in the statistical analyses and selection inferences. The topic of the study would appeal to researchers studying maize dispersal and adaptation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Biologically informed cortical models predict optogenetic perturbations

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Christos Sourmpis
   2. Carl CH Petersen
   3. Wulfram Gerstner
   4. Guillaume Bellec

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study demonstrates the significance of incorporating biological constraints in training neural networks to develop models that make accurate predictions under novel conditions. By comparing standard sigmoid recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with biologically constrained RNNs, the manuscript offers compelling evidence that biologically grounded inductive biases enhance generalization to perturbed conditions. This manuscript will appeal to a wide audience in systems and computational neuroscience.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Reassessing the link between adiposity and head and neck cancer: a Mendelian randomization study

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Fernanda Morales Berstein
   2. Jasmine Khouja
   3. Mark Gormley
   4. Elmira Ebrahimi
   5. Shama Virani
   6. James D McKay
   7. Paul Brennan
   8. Tom G Richardson
   9. Caroline L Relton
   10. George Davey Smith
   11. M Carolina Borges
   12. Tom Dudding
   13. Rebecca C Richmond

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reports that higher genetically predicted BMI is associated with a modestly increased risk of head and neck cancer. The convincing evidence is supported by rigorous Mendelian Randomization approaches, using multiple genetic instruments and models that reduce sensitivity to pleiotropy. However, results from pleiotropy-robust analyses were less consistent, which limits the strength of causal inference. The work will be of interest to researchers studying cancer risk factors and genetic epidemiology.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Spatial and longitudinal tracking of enhancer-AAV vectors that target transgene expression to injured mouse myocardium

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. David W Wolfson
   2. Joshua A Hull
   3. Yongwu Li
   4. Trevor J Gonzalez
   5. Mourya D Jayaram
   6. Garth W Devlin
   7. Valentina Cigliola
   8. Kelsey A Oonk
   9. Alan Rosales
   10. Nenad Bursac
   11. Aravind Asokan
   12. Kenneth D Poss

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study identifies novel approaches to improving transgene expression in the injured mammalian myocardium through a combination of a tissue regeneration enhancer element and engineered AAVs - specifically, a liver-detargeting capsid, AAV.cc84, and an in vivo library screen-selected AAV-IR41. The evidence is convincing, and the AAV vectors are of fundamental value to the field of cardiac gene therapy. Future research exploring how to combine the features of AAV.cc84 and AAV-IR41 could yield an even more promising vector for therapeutic use.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Independent validation of transgenerational inheritance of learned pathogen avoidance in Caenorhabditis elegans

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Aalimah Akinosho
   2. Joseph Alexander
   3. Kyle Floyd
   4. Andres Gabriel Vidal-Gadea

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study concerns a model for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, the learned avoidance by C. elegans of the PA14 pathogenic strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. A recent study questioned whether transgenerational inheritance in this paradigm lacks robustness. The authors of this study have worked independently of the group that reported the original phenomenon and also independently of the group that challenged the original report. With solid data, this study independently validates findings previously reported by the Murphy group, confirming that the paradigm is reproducible elsewhere. The reviewers also appreciated the information on reagent sources used by different groups. The present study is therefore of broad interest to anyone studying genetics, epigenetics, or learned behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Susceptibility of Kit-mutant mice to sepsis caused by enteral dysbiosis, not mast cell deficiency

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Thorsten B Feyerabend
   2. Fabienne Schochter
   3. Alpaslan Tasdogan
   4. Hans-Reimer Rodewald

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a useful finding showing that the high susceptibility to sepsis of Kit-mutant mice is due to dysbiosis. However, the data provided is incomplete and would benefit from more rigorous approaches. With the mechanism part strengthened, this paper would be of interest to researchers on mast cell biology and mucosal immunology.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Layers of immunity: Deconstructing the Drosophila effector response

    This article has 6 authors:

    1. Faustine Ryckebusch
    2. Yao Tian
    3. Mylene Rapin
    4. Fanny Schüpfer
    5. Mark Austin Hanson
    6. Bruno Lemaitre

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This work provides one of the first important attempts to look at Drosophila immune responses against bacterial, viral, and fungal pathogens in a way that combines the roles of four major arms in immunity (Imd signaling, Toll signaling, phagocytosis, and melanization) rather than studying them separately. The findings are compelling and the tools provided can be used as they are, or built upon, in various contexts.

    Reviewed by eLife