Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

The study by Pudlowski et al. shows that a previously-identified protein complex, composed of delta- and epsilon-tubulin together with TEDC1 and TEDC2, functions in generating centriolar triplet microtubules, and that this is crucial for the proper formation of centriolar subdomains and the stability of centrioles throughout the cell cycle. This is an important study that advances our understanding of centriole biogenesis and structure and is supported by convincing evidence based on knockout cell lines, immunoprecipitation, and ultrastructure expansion microscopy. The work is of interest to cell biologists, in particular researchers with interest in centrosome biology.

eLife Assessment

This important study explores the relationship between the sequence of prokaryotic promoter elements and their activity using mutagenesis to generate thousands of mutant sequences. The evidence supporting these findings is convincing. This work will appeal to those interested in bacterial genetics, genome evolution, and gene regulation.

eLife Assessment

This is a valuable study describing how rhabdomyosarcoma fusion-oncogenes, VGLL2-NCOA2 and TEAD1-NCOA2, function at the genomic, transcriptional, and proteomic levels in multiple systems. The experimental data is convincing, supporting a model in which these fusion-oncogenes leverage TEAD transcriptional signatures independent of YAP/TAZ. This work offers new mechanistic insights into oncogenic gene fusion events and reveals potential therapeutic strategies for the treatment of rhabdomyosarcomas.

eLife Assessment

This important work provides another layer of regulatory mechanism for TGF-beta signaling activity. The evidence convincingly supports the involvement of microtubules as a reservoir of Smad2/3, and association of Rudhira with microtubules is critical for this process. The work will be of board interest to developmental biologists in general and molecular biologists in the field of growth factor signaling.

eLife assessment

This useful work provides a risk-prediction tool, in the form of a nomogram, for practitioners and elderly patients with non-metastatic colon cancer using data from the SEER registry. The unique contribution of this work is the focus on conditional survival. However, the underlying statistical approach is suboptimal and therefore incomplete, which substantially lessens the potential impact of this work. The analysis could use a more rigorous consideration of competing risks.

eLife assessment

This study provides a novel and promising NPRL2 gene therapy for enhanced immunotherapy response in a KRAS/STK11 mutant anti-PD1 resistant metastatic NSCLC humanized mouse model. Overall, the authors presented a large amount of convincing in vivo data to demonstrate that NPRL2 gene therapy induces antitumor activity through DC-mediated antigen presentation and cytotoxic immune cell activation. This work will be of interest and useful to medical biologists and oncologists in the research field of KRAS-mutant NSCLC.

eLife assessment

This important study provides new insight into the dynamics that underlie the development of therapy resistance in prostate cancer by revealing that divergent tumor evolutionary paths occur in response to different treatment timing and that these converge on common resistance mechanisms. The use of barcoded lineage tracing and characterization of isolated tumor clonal populations provides compelling evidence supporting the importance of clonal dynamics in a tumor ecosystem for treatment resistance. Several open questions remain, however, raising the possibility of alternative interpretations of the data set in its current form. Overall, the findings deepen our understanding of prostate cancer evolution and hold promising implications for how drug resistance can be addressed or prevented.

eLife Assessment

The authors propose that positive biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships found in experiments have been exaggerated because commonly used statistical analyses are flawed. To remedy this, a new type of analysis based on a concept of "partial density monoculture yield" is proposed. However, the presented concept and analysis methods are not reproducibly described (how can partial density monoculture yield experimentally be assessed?), do not appear to be complete, and are inadequate for hypothesis testing. The reviewers found that the authors misinterpret current research in the field and made limited efforts to understand or address the reviewer comments about this study.

eLife assessment

This valuable manuscript describes evidence of sex differences in specific corticostriatal projections during alcohol consumption, and this is noteworthy given the increasing rates/levels of drinking in females and their liability for Alcohol Use disorder. The authors provide solid evidence of the lateralisation of the activity of the circuit, but other evidence is incomplete, particularly with regard to how the drinking measure relates to intoxication. There are some inconsistencies that make it difficult to reconcile the photometry and behavioral data. The findings would benefit from causal assessment in the future. The findings will be of interest to researchers investigating functional circuitry underlying alcohol-driven behaviors.

eLife Assessment

This important study addresses the idea that defective lysosomal clearance might be causal to renal dysfunction in cystinosis. With mostly solid data, the authors observe that restoring expression of vATPase subunits and treatment with Astaxanthin ameliorate mitochondrial function in a model of renal epithelial cells, opening opportunities for translational application to humans.

eLife Assessment

This important study uses recently developed EEG analysis methods to investigate spatial distractor suppression in a combined visual search/working memory task. The reported results are compelling, although they are open to multiple interpretations. The study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists working on visual attention and memory.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study provides new insights into the maturation of ribbon synapses in zebrafish neuromast hair cells. Live-cell imaging and pharmacological and genetic manipulations together provide compelling evidence that the formation of this synaptic organelle is a dynamic process involving the fusion of presynaptic elements and microtubule transport, though the evidence that ribbon precursors move in a directed motion toward the active zone is less persuasive. These findings will be of interest to neuroscientists studying synapse formation and function and should inspire further research into the molecular basis for synaptic ribbon maturation.

eLife Assessment

This study introduces a useful extension to a recently proposed model of neural assembly activity. The extension was to add recurrent connections to the hidden units of the Restricted Boltzmann Machine. The authors show solid evidence that the new model outperforms their earlier model on both a simulated dataset and on whole-brain neural activity from zebrafish.

eLife assessment

This study provides important information about the formation of ribbon synapses in mouse cochlear hair cells, which facilitate the temporally-precise transmission of acoustic information to the auditory nerve. Live-cell imaging provides compelling evidence that ribbon precursor volume is dynamically modified by fission and fusion events on microtubules, but some of the other evidence included, particularly in relation to the directed transport of these precursors to the hair cell active zone is incomplete. These findings will be of interest to neuroscientists studying synapse formation and function and should inspire further research into the molecular basis for synaptic ribbon maturation.

eLife Assessment

Using electrophysiological recordings in freely moving rats, this valuable study investigates the role of gamma oscillations in the development of spatial representations in the hippocampus. Specifically, solid evidence supports the claim that distinct gamma oscillatory inputs contribute to the emergence of 'theta sequences', which encode the animal's ongoing trajectory. This study will be of interest to neuroscientists working in the fields of spatial navigation and neuronal dynamics.

eLife assessment

The paper characterized a specific defect in the spatial working memory of mice with a deficit in a protein called Rac1. Rac1 inhibition was limited to the presynaptic compartment of neurons, which is significant because past work has inhibited both pre- and postsynaptic compartments. The study also identified potential effectors of Rac1. The work is important for these reasons, and the strength of the evidence is exceptional.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study investigates the brain representations of Braille letters in blind participants and provides evidence using EEG and fMRI that the decoding of letter identity across the reading hand takes place in the visual cortex. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing and the work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on brain plasticity.

eLife Assessment

This work is an important contribution to the development of a biologically plausible theory of statistical modeling of spiking activity. The authors convincingly implemented the statistical inference of input likelihood in a simple neural circuit, demonstrating the relationship between synaptic homeostasis, neural representations, and computational accuracy. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists, both theoretical and experimental, who are exploring how statistical computation is implemented in neural networks.

eLife Assessment

This important work uses in vivo foveal cone-resolved imaging and simultaneous microscopic photostimulation to investigate the relationship between ocular drift - eye movements long thought to be random - and visual acuity. The surprising result is that ocular drift is systematic - causing the object to move to the center of the cone mosaic over the course of each perceptual trial. The tools used to reach this conclusion are state-of-the-art and the evidence presented is convincing. This work advances our understanding of the visuomotor system and the interplay of anatomy, oculomotor behavior, and visual acuity.

eLife Assessment

This paper presents miniML, an AI-based framework for the detection of synaptic events. Benchmark results presented in the paper are compelling, demonstrating the superiority of miniML over current state-of-the-art alternatives. The performance of miniML is demonstrated across various experimental paradigms, showing that miniML has the potential to become a valuable tool for the analysis of synaptic signals.