Evaluated articles

eLife assessment

This paper expands the genetic toolset that was previously developed by the Rao lab to introduce the conditional downregulation of neurotransmission components in Drosophila. As a proof of principle, the authors tested their new collection and provide evidence of the contribution of CNMamide (a neuropeptide) to the temporal control of locomotor activity patterns. These are overall important findings supported by compelling evidence.

eLife assessment

In this manuscript, the authors investigate whether the effects of the BCG vaccine on immunity to Mtb infection could be improved by inhibiting amidation of the peptidoglycan sidechains to allow for recognition by NOD-1. This is a very important area and an interesting new approach to improve vaccination for TB. The authors find that CRISPRi knockdown of murT-gatD causes rather dramatic cell wall defects, more accessible cell wall labeling, and results in attenuated growth in macrophages and mice. This forms a foundation for further study of whether an approach like that which is presented herein would improve vaccination responses in TB.

eLife assessment

This important study combines disease-associated genetic variation with a massively parallel reporter assay and different cellular perturbations to identify context-specific genetic regulatory effects. The methods and analyses are solid and the proposed functional variants will be helpful for experimental and quantitative geneticists studying a wide range of complex traits.

eLife assessment

This study presents valuable findings regarding inter-individual variability in the neural and behavioral effects of ketamine. The methodological approach used to characterize this variability is compelling, but the evidence to support the specificity of the changes and their genetic correlates is incomplete. The study would benefit from a more thorough examination of the specificity of the pharmacological and genetic results.

eLife assessment

In this study, deep learning methods are deployed in the context of a group hunting scenario wherein two predators pursue a single prey. Through deep learning, the two predators achieve higher predation success than occurs with single predators. Much of the evidence in this important study is solid, with implications for future work on the ethology and simulation of cooperative behaviors.

eLife assessment

This study provides a valuable investigation into whether phenotypic variance due to interactions between genetic variants can be measured using genome-wide association summary statistics. The authors present a method, i-LDSC, that uses statistics on the correlations between genotypes at different loci (linkage disequilibrium) to estimate the phenotypic variance explained by both additive genetic effects and pairwise interactions. While the authors present extensive simulations on the performance of their method and empirical results indicating the presence of epistasis (as they define epistasis) it is unclear how their method and results relate to the traditional definitions of additive and non-additive genetic effects, which are different from the authors' definitions.

eLife Assessment

This useful study presents a possible solution for a significant problem - that of draining vein sensitivity in functional MRI, which complicates the interpretability of laminar-fMRI results. The addition of a low diffusion-weighted gradient is presented to remove the draining vein signal and obtain functional responses with higher spatial fidelity. However, the strength of the evidence is incomplete, and most tests appear to have been done only in a single subject. Significance thresholds in presented maps are very low and most cortical depth-dependent response profiles do not differ from baseline, even in the BOLD data shown as reference. Curiously, even BOLD group data fails to replicate the well-known pattern of draining towards the cortical surface.

eLife assessment

This important study combines psychophysics, fMRI, and TMS to reveal a causal role of FEF in generating an attention-induced ocular dominance shift, with potential relevance for clinical applications. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing. The work will be of broad interest to perceptual and cognitive neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This important manuscript demonstrates that UGGT1 is involved in preventing the premature degradation of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) glycoproteins through the re-glucosylation of their N-linked glycans following release from the calnexin/calreticulin lectins. The authors include a wealth of convincing data in support of their findings, although extending these findings to other types of substrates, such as secreted proteins, could further demonstrate the global importance of this mechanism for protein trafficking through the secretory pathway. This work will be of interest to scientists interested in ER protein quality control, proteostasis, and protein trafficking.

eLife assessment

This study presents important findings on the different polymorphs of alpha-synuclein filaments that form at various pH's during in vitro assembly reactions with purified recombinant protein. Of particular note is the discovery of two new polymorphs (1M and 5A) that form in PBS buffer at pH 7. The strength of the evidence presented is convincing. The work will be of interest to biochemists and biophysicists working on protein aggregation and amyloids.

eLife assessment

This valuable study showed convincing evidence that archerfishes can adapt their shooting behaviors to airflow perturbations. The fish also exhibits adaptive behaviors indicative of an egocentric representation of the perturbation, though direct evidence is missing. Hence, this work will be of interest to those interested in cross-species comparisons for motor learning.

eLife assessment

This valuable study advances our understanding of the brain nuclei involved in rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep regulation. Using a combination of imaging, electrophysiology, and optogenetic tools, the study provides convincing evidence that inhibitory neurons in the preoptic area of the hypothalamus influence REM sleep. This work will be of interest to neurobiologists working on the brain circuits of sleep.

eLife assessment

This important study evaluates a model for multisensory correlation detection, focusing on the detection of correlated transients in visual and auditory stimuli. Overall, the experimental design is sound and the evidence is compelling. The synergy between the experimental and theoretical aspects of the paper is strong, and the work will be of interest to both neuroscientists and psychologists working in the domain of sensory processing and perception.

eLife Assessment

This study provides solid evidence that odor fear conditioning biases olfactory sensory neuron receptor choice in mice and that this bias is detectable in the next generation. The authors use rigorous histological and behavioral analyses, including unsupervised behavioral quantification, to support the conclusion that odor-specific sensory representations can be shaped by experience and partially transmitted across generations. While the behavioral effects in offspring are modest and the mechanistic basis of inheritance remains unresolved, the study offers an important and carefully executed contribution to understanding experience-dependent sensory plasticity and its intergenerational consequences.

eLife assessment

This study provides important findings based on compelling evidence demonstrating that females and males have different strategies to regulate energy consumption in the brain in the context of low energy intake. While food deprivation reduces energy consumption and visual processing performance in the visual cortex of males, the female cortex is unaffected, likely at the expense of other functions. This study is relevant for scientists interested in body metabolism and neuroscience.

eLife assessment

Zhang et al. deliver an important transcriptomic atlas of the human spinal cord, combining single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to unveil molecular insights. While convincingly overcoming Visium limitations using snRNA-seq, the manuscript is criticized for its largely observational approach and lack of quantitative analysis, especially in supporting claims about sex differences in motor neurons and DRG-spinal cord neuronal interactions.

eLife assessment

This valuable study uses a novel experimental design to elegantly demonstrate how we exploit stimulus structure to overcome working memory capacity limits. The presented behavioural and neural evidence are solid and in line with the proposed information compression mechanism. This study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists studying structure learning and memory.

eLife assessment

This study investigated the factors related to understudied genes in biomedical research. It showed that understudied genes are largely abandoned at the writing stage, and it identified a number of biological and experimental factors that influence which genes are selected for investigation. The study is an important contribution to this branch of meta-research, and the evidence in support of the findings is solid.

eLife assessment

The OpuA Type I ABC importer uses two substrate binding domains to capture extracellular glycine betaine and present the substrate to the transmembrane domain for subsequent transport and correction of internal dehydration. This study presents valuable findings addressing the question of whether the two substrate binding domains of OpuA dock and physically interact in a salt-dependent manner. The single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer and cryogenic electron microscopy data that are presented provide convincing support for the existence of a transient interaction between the substrate binding domains that depends on ionic strength, laying a foundation for future studies exploring how this interaction is involved in the overall transport mechanism.