Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study provides a useful investigation of machine learning approaches that can lessen potential gaps in the prediction of behaviour from brain imaging data across majority and minority samples. The authors provide incomplete evidence to suggest that domain adaptation methods can mitigate these gaps. The analysis would benefit from further testing of model generalisability and the inclusion of recommended workflows for how the tested approaches can be used in future research. This work will be of interest to scientists using machine learning in brain imaging.

eLife Assessment

The cell wall and plasma membrane are tightly associated in plant cells, and even after plasmolysis, sites of strong contact remain between the plasma membrane and cell wall. Here, the authors provide solid data to implicate an Arabidopsis lectin-like receptor kinase in plasma-membrane-to-cell-wall contact sites, and propose that these attachment sites are of importance for plant resistance to hyperosmotic stress, yet the evidence remains incomplete without key controls. These important results broaden our view on dynamic modulation of plasma membrane topology and its physiological consequences.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study compares the anti-HIV activity of human natural killer cell subsets and identifies CD56^dimCD16^dim cells as a potentially key effector population against HIV-infected autologous T cells. The evidence supporting the central conclusions seems incomplete because the interpretation may be substantially confounded by activation-induced CD16 downregulation, making it difficult to distinguish intrinsic functional differences from phenotypic changes that occur during target-cell engagement. Additional experiments using purified NK-cell subsets and appropriate controls would substantially strengthen the evidence supporting the major conclusions.

eLife Assessment

This paper demonstrates that relocating the MreB-Rod complex to the poles of E. coli can reprogram cell-wall synthesis, causing cells to elongate through peptidoglycan incorporation at the poles rather than along the cell length. This is a valuable finding for understanding how bacterial growth can be spatially reprogrammed and provides insight into how distinct modes of bacterial growth might arise. However, the evidence is currently incomplete, particularly regarding the nature of the polar structures, their relationship to cell shape and growth, and the requirement for a pre-existing pole.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable investigation of how inhibition of the WNK-SPAK/OSR1 pathway influences neuronal chloride homeostasis and seizure-like activity in organotypic hippocampal slice cultures. The evidence supporting the principal mechanistic conclusions is incomplete because several proposed mechanisms are inferred from changes in chloride dynamics rather than directly demonstrated. The work will be of interest to researchers studying chloride homeostasis, inhibitory neurotransmission, and epilepsy.

eLife Assessment

This is a valuable study that contributes to our understanding of transcriptomic responses in microglia to HIV infection in the human brain. The evidence provided remains incomplete, and further analyses are required (i.e., a bigger sample size) to eliminate confounding factors so that the study can unequivocally ascertain the persistent inflammatory state of microglia in HIV-suppressed brains.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study identifies an upstream repressive region in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae DDI2/3 promoter and shows that chemical stress induced by cyanamide or MMS is accompanied by reduced histone abundance and decreased nucleosome occupancy across the DDI2/3 locus. Genetic histone depletion is sufficient to enhance DDI2/3 expression, while MNase-seq and genetic analyses support a model in which the transcription factor Fzf1 both activates transcription through its established promoter-binding function and promotes chromatin changes that relieve nucleosome-mediated repression, helping to explain the unusually strong induction of DDI2/3 relative to other Fzf1 targets. The study is significant, as it provides a conceptually interesting extension of Fzf1-mediated stress regulation. The strength of the evidence is solid, although additional controls and a more cautious treatment of whether Fzf1 directly drives nucleosome eviction versus acting indirectly through transcriptional recruitment or chromatin-remodeling factors would further strengthen the mechanistic conclusions.