Latest preprint reviews

1. Parvalbumin interneuron ErbB4 controls ongoing network oscillations and olfactory behaviors in mice

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Bin Hu
   2. Chi Geng
   3. Feng Guo
   4. Ying Liu
   5. Ran Wang
   6. You-Ting Chen
   7. Xiao-Yu Hou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides useful information on the potential role of ERbB4 expression in parvalbumin-positive cells on olfactory behaviour and circuit dynamics in the olfactory bulb. The question is timely and novel, and findings could shed light on the critical role that ErbB4 may play in modulating olfactory bulb cell function and olfactory perception. Although the authors use a comprehensive set of experiments for their analysis, the evidence is incomplete as many of the experiments are underpowered and the model for selective knockout of ErbB4 in olfactory parvalbumin cells is not validated.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. MED26-enriched condensates drive erythropoiesis through modulating transcription pausing

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Shicong Zhu
   2. Xiaoting Zhang
   3. Na Li
   4. Xinying Zhao
   5. Man Li
   6. Si Xie
   7. Qiuyu Yue
   8. Yunfeng Li
   9. Dong Li
   10. Fan Wu
   11. Zile Zhang
   12. Ziqi Feng
   13. Yiyang Zhang
   14. Wonhyung Choi
   15. Xinyi Jia
   16. Yuelin Deng
   17. Qi Hu
   18. Xingyun Yao
   19. Xiaofei Gao
   20. Hsiang-Ying Lee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study is important to show the role of MED26 in red cell formation. Linking transcription pausing with erythropoiesis is a key discovery. The data are solid although there are still spaces to improve. The in vivo data are limited by specificity concerns on their Cre model. Having RNA-seq, using more erythroid markers such as band3 and a4-integrin, and orthogonal validation with iPSC-erythropoiesis model will improve the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Emergence of power-law distributions in protein-protein interaction networks through study bias

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. David B. Blumenthal
   2. Marta Lucchetta
   3. Linda Kleist
   4. Sándor P. Fekete
   5. Markus List
   6. Martin H. Schaefer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript makes an important contribution to the understanding of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks by challenging the widely held assumption that their degree distributions uniformly follow a power law. The authors present convincing evidence that biases in study design, such as data aggregation and selective research focus, may contribute to the appearance of power-law-like distributions. While the power law assumption has already been questioned in network biology, the methodological rigor and correction procedures introduced here are valuable for advancing our understanding of PPI network structure.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Enterovirus A71 adaptation to heparan sulfate comes with capsid stability tradeoff

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Han Kang Tee
   2. Gregory Mathez
   3. Valeria Cagno
   4. Aleksandar Antanasijevic
   5. Sophie Clément
   6. Caroline Tapparel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important work and it correlates capsid stability with mutations that promote heparan sulfate binding. The data is solid, but there is a need for further analysis and experiments to support the claims and to propose a more detailed mechanism that could explain how these mutations altered capsid stability.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Leveraging place field repetition to understand positional versus nonpositional inputs to hippocampal field CA1

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. William Hockeimer
   2. Ruo-Yah Lai
   3. Maanasa Natrajan
   4. William Snider
   5. James J. Knierim

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a valuable work that convincingly reveals that place cells in the hippocampus that exhibit repeated firing fields incorporate information about non-positional variables in each firing field. They reveal that individual firing fields of a single place cell can exhibit tuning to different head orientations, suggesting hippocampal neurons are flexible in terms of how they incorporate non-positional inputs.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Membrane binding properties of the cytoskeletal protein bactofilin

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Ying Liu
   2. Rajani Karmakar
   3. Wieland Steinchen
   4. Saumyak Mukherjee
   5. Gert Bange
   6. Lars V Schäfer
   7. Martin Thanbichler

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The investigators studied the membrane-targeting sequence (MTS) of bactofilin A (BacA) in Caulobacter crescentus to explore its role in membrane binding and polymerization. They used various techniques, including microscopy, liposome binding assays, and simulations, to show that membrane targeting may be crucial for BacA polymerization. While their findings on membrane association are valuable, the absence of direct polymerization assays and lack of proper controls in some experiments make the study incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Spatial frequency adaptation modulates population receptive field sizes

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Ecem Altan
   2. Catherine Morgan
   3. Steven Dakin
   4. D Samuel Schwarzkopf

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important finding regarding a significant, understudied question: How does adaptation affect spatial frequency processing in the human visual cortex? Using both psychophysics and neuroimaging the authors conclude that adaptation induces changes in perceived spatial frequency and population receptive field size (pRF) size, depending on the adaptation state. Specifically, adapting to a low spatial frequency increases perceived spatial frequency and results in smaller pRFs, whereas adapting to a high spatial frequency decreases perceived spatial frequency and leads to broader pRFs. These results offer an explanation for previous seemingly conflicting findings regarding the effects of adaptation on size illusions and the evidence is solid; however, including a clear, direct comparison between pRF sizes in the high-adapted and low-adapted conditions would further strengthen the argument.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Sequence action representations contextualize during rapid skill learning

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Debadatta Dash
   2. Fumiaki Iwane
   3. William Hayward
   4. Roberto Salamanca-Giron
   5. Marlene Bonstrup
   6. Ethan Buch
   7. Leonardo G Cohen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study investigates how the neural representation of individual finger movements changes during the early period of sequence learning. By combining a new method for extracting features from human magnetoencephalography data and decoding analyses, the authors provide incomplete evidence of an early, swift change in the brain regions correlated with sequence learning, including a set of previously unreported frontal cortical regions. The addition of more control analyses to rule out that head movement artefacts influence the findings, and to further explain the proposal of offline contextualization during short rest periods as the basis for improvement performance would strengthen the manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Molecular characterization of gustatory second-order neurons reveals integrative mechanisms of gustatory and metabolic information

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Rubén Mollá-Albaladejo
   2. Manuel Jiménez-Caballero
   3. Juan A Sánchez-Alcañiz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable insights into the organization of second-order circuits for gustatory neurons, particularly how they integrate opposing taste inputs and the metabolic states that regulate feeding behavior. An elegant, compelling combination of multiple techniques discovered the target neurons for gustatory integration. However, the functional and behavioral evidence for the function of these neurons is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. A biofilm-tropic Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteriophage uses the exopolysaccharide Psl as receptor

    This article has 13 authors:

    1. Brenna Walton
    2. Serena Abbondante
    3. Michaela Ellen Marshall
    4. Justyna M Dobruchowska
    5. Amani Alvi
    6. Larry A Gallagher
    7. Nikhil Vallikat
    8. Zhemin Zhang
    9. Daniel J Wozniak
    10. Edward W Yu
    11. Geert-Jan Boons
    12. Eric Pearlman
    13. Arne Rietsch

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      The study provides valuable findings regarding the identification of a new bacteriophage that uses the Pseudomonas aeruginosa exopolysaccharide Psl as a receptor, thus suggesting a novel approach to control biofilms. While much of the data presented is solid, additional work and clarifications are still required to fully support some of the main claims. This manuscript will interest those working on biofilms, specifically in Pseudomonas, on phage physiology and discovery, and on alternatives to controlling bacterial pathogens.

    Reviewed by eLife