Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study provides an important contribution to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the limited capacity to process rapid sequences of visual stimuli. It reports convincing evidence that the attentional blink affects neurally separable processes of visual detection and discrimination. The study will be of interest to neuroscientists and psychologists investigating perception and attention.

eLife assessment

This work presents valuable information on the structure of the spirosome's native extended conformation as the active form of the aldehyde-alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhE) enzyme. The evidence is solid, although the work does not provide a mechanistic understanding of the function and dynamics of AdhE.

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important finding on durotaxis in various amoeboid cells that is independent of focal adhesions. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is compelling. The work will be of interest to cell biologists and biophysicists working on rigidity sensing, the cytoskeleton, and cell migration.

eLife assessment

This study presents an important study of the relationship between morphogen signaling and cell fate choices in the forming zebrafish neural tube, addressing a topical question in developmental biology. The authors provide a solid characterization of the precision limit for gene regulatory networks interpreting Shh, with single-cell resolution and state-of-the-art in vivo approaches. However, the analyses are at times incomplete and would benefit from a higher number of cell traces. With the analyses strengthened, this work will be of interest to developmental biologists interested in cellular decision-making.

eLife assessment

This study reports important results and new insights into humoral immune responses to Plasmodium falciparum sexual stage proteins. The experiments are based on the use of target-agnostic memory B cell sorting and screening approaches as well as several state-of-the-art technologies. The authors present compelling evidence that one antibody, B1E11K, is cross-reactive with multiple proteins containing glutamate-rich repeats through homotypic interactions, a process similar to what has been observed for Plasmodium circumsporozoite protein repeat-directed antibodies.

eLife Assessment

This important study addresses key assumptions underlying current models of the formation of value-based decisions. The authors provide convincing evidence that the subjective values human participants assign to items change across sequences of multiple decisions. They establish methods to detect these changes in frequently used behavioral task designs.

eLife Assessment

This study presents potentially valuable insights into the role of climbing fibers in cerebellar learning. The main claim is that climbing fiber activity is necessary for optokinetic reflex adaptation, but is dispensable for its long-term consolidation. There is evidence to support the first part of this claim, though it requires a clearer demonstration of the penetrance and selectivity of the manipulation. However, support for the latter part of the claim is incomplete owing to methodological concerns, including the robustness of the CF marking and manipulation approach and the unclear efficacy of longer-duration climbing fiber activity suppression.

eLife assessment

This landmark paper introduces the generation and analysis of a connectome resource of the entire ventral nerve cord of a fruit fly which is one of the top model organisms to investigate how a nervous system forms and functions. The work introduces new and improved approaches - from tissue preparation to automated reconstruction - to generate a detailed connectome from a complex adult ventral nerve cord. This extensive new dataset provides cell type and lineage annotations, putative neurotransmitter expression information, and the potential to link to genetic driver lines, with compelling evidence to support the claims made.

eLife assessment

Work described in this manuscript reveals the importance of the zinc transporter SLC30A1 in the antimicrobial function of macrophages, specifically against Salmonella. Cell-targeted deletion of the zinc transporter increased susceptibility of mice to systemic infection with Salmonella, leading to decreases in several cell functions such as nos2 expression. The authors argue that zinc homeostasis promotes macrophage cell function that is not conductive to the intracellular proliferation of Salmonella. This study provides novel and supportive evidence for a new pathway in nutritional immunity.

eLife assessment

The authors provide a high quality genome of the xenacoelomorph worm Xenoturbella bocki and discuss its structure and evolution. Understanding the genomic structure of this group provides important insights into bilaterian evolution. The authors make a solid case that the data they present can support the placement of Xenacoelomorpha within the deuterostomes rather than as a sister group to all other bilaterians, but do not unequivocally reject the competing scenario.

eLife assessment

Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter and its synaptic concentration is controlled by re-uptake by the sodium-coupled serotonin transporter SERT. The manuscript by Chan et al reports results from a systematic deep mutagenesis approach to study the surface expression and APP+ (5HT analogue) transport mechanism of the human serotonin transporter. The authors complement this experimental evidence with large-scale molecular simulations of the transporter in the presence of APP+. The use of deep mutagenesis and large-scale adaptive sampling simulations is impressive, and could contribute to understanding the structural requirements for folding and how transporters evolve to recognize different substrates.

eLife assessment

This investigation marks an important advancement in our understanding of motor thalamus connectivity, illustrating a complex integration of inputs that reshapes previous models. The study utilizes compelling methodologies that expose a dynamic synaptic network, although the evidence of triple-input convergence on individual neurons and for multiple driver type inputs onto motor thalamic neurons remains incomplete. Despite this, the findings provide a persuasive rationale for revisiting our perceptions of the thalamic role in motor control, with a call for further studies to substantiate the breadth of these functional interactions.

eLife assessment

This fundamental work advances our understanding of the central coding and control mechanisms regulating sympathetic nervous system efferent signals to bone. The evidence supporting the conclusion is mostly convincing, although the inclusion of higher resolution images for certain data and further discussions would strengthen the study. This paper holds potential interest for skeletal biologists and neuroscientists who study the brain-bone sympathetic neural circuits.

eLife assessment

The study presents a valuable finding on quantifying the orientation and organization of chondrocyte columns in the prenatal and postnatal growth plate cartilage using advanced 3D imaging and a sophisticated image analysis pipeline. The evidence supporting the authors' conclusions regarding the lack of columns in the fetal growth plate is considered inadequate due to technical caveats, inconsistencies in the data and corresponding model, and failure to correctly put the findings in context.

eLife assessment

This paper is valuable in that it provides a critical missing link between measures of structural connectivity and rhythmic tapping abilities, pointing to some interesting possibilities for how tapping synchronization is carried out. The methodology and findings are solid, and of interest to those studying the neural mechanisms of timing.

eLife assessment

This paper presents a new method for separating organelles in an unbiased way. The method is applied to the separation of distinct subpopulations of insulin vesicles. There are concerns around whether the vesicles measured are in fact insulin vesicles and whether the observed changes in vesicle populations upon glucose stimulation are biologically meaningful, and thus it is difficult to assess at this stage how well the technique performs. This paper is likely to be of wide interest to cell biologists studying a variety of compartments, as well as to researchers in the beta cell field.

eLife assessment

This valuable study reports that actin-related proteins may be involved in transcriptional regulation during spermatogenesis. The supporting data remain incomplete, and more extensive disentanglement from the canonical role of these actin-related proteins and the experimental validation of in silico predictions are required. This work will be of interest to reproductive biologists and other researchers working on non-canonical roles of actin and actin-related proteins.

eLife assessment

This study uses numerical simulations to characterize and compare variants of two widely used mathematical models and then applies those models to inferring evolutionary parameters from breast cancer data. The copious numerical results will be of some interest to mathematical biologists working with similar models. The finding that many breast cancer mutations are mildly deleterious is valuable but the evidence supporting this claim is incomplete because the mathematical modelling and statistical methods are insufficiently justified and inadequately validated.

eLife Assessment

This important study significantly advances our understanding of the skeleton of cartilaginous fishes by using a range of state of the art and complementary approaches to compare the skeleton amongst three cartilagenous fishes (catshark, little skate and ratfish). The evidence presented is compelling and likely to impact several fields of study.

eLife Assessment

This study unveils important data describing cell states of olfactory ensheathing cells, and how these cell states may relate to repair after spinal cord injury. The framework used for characterizing these cells is solid. This work will be of interest to stem cell biologists and spinal cord injury researchers.