Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This work by Hill and colleagues offers valuable insights into the development of learning abilities involved in action control from toddlerhood to adulthood. Data across 4 experiments provide solid evidence that in a task involving noisy but continuous action, the ability to learn reward probability develops gradually and may be limited by spatial processing and probabilistic reward reasoning. Questions remain about whether the task truly measures motor learning or more generic cognitive capacities, and whether a proposed model of reinforcement-based motor learning adequately captures the data.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study reports an extensive analysis of the way a humoral immune response to parasitoid wasp is expressed and regulated, building on previous work from the authors on an anti-parasitoid effector lectin. The solid evidence uses two complementary approaches to show which innate immune pathways are involved in the regulation of the anti-parasitoid response. The evidence would be stronger if some analytical and related concerns can be addressed. The work will be of relevance to the community of investigators studying insect immune cells as well as researchers interested in host defense against parasitism.

eLife Assessment

This study presents TopOMetry, an important novel dimensionality reduction method that addresses a signficant challenge in the analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing data. The authors provide convincing evidence of the method's utility across various tasks, including estimating intrinsic dimensionalities and identifying cell types. The work would benefit from more rigorous validation and a reorganization of the text.

eLife Assessment

This important work shows how a simple geophysical setting of gas flow over a narrow channel of water can create a physical environment that leads to the isothermal replication of nucleic acids. The work presents convincing evidence for an isothermal polymerase chain reaction in careful experiments involving evaporation and convective flows, complimented with fluid dynamics simulations. This work will be of interest to scientists working on the origin of life and more broadly, on nucleic acids and diagnostic applications.

eLife Assessment

Treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) infections is challenging because of intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance to most antibiotic drug classes. Therefore, by using donor B cells in subjects with cystic fibrosis who undergo intermittent or chronic airway PA infections, the authors aimed to isolate B-cell receptors against PA virulence factors and examined their biological activities. The data are solid and the protective antibodies identified in this study could be useful for protection against PA.

eLife assessment

This important study demonstrates a mechanism underlying the sex-dependent regulation of the susceptibility to gut colonization by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The evidence supporting the conclusion is solid, but additional experiments would strengthen the findings. The work will interest biologists who are working on intestinal infection and immunity.

eLife assessment

This valuable manuscript investigated the role of glutamate signaling in the dorsomedial striatum of rats in a treadmill-based task and reported that it differs in goal-trackers compared to sign-trackers in a way that corresponds to differences in behaviour. The evidence supporting these claims is solid but could be further strengthened by adding more analyses and more detailed descriptions of current analyses. These findings will primarily be of interest to behavioural neuroscientists.

eLife assessment

This study presents an assessment of the effect of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) inhibition on the activity of glycolysis and tricarboxylic acid cycle. The data were collected and analyzed using solid and validated methodology. This paper makes a useful contribution to the field as it considers a control analysis of LDH flux.

eLife assessment

In this valuable work, Lodhiya et al. provide evidence that excessive ATP underlies the killing of the model organism Mycobacterium smegmatis by two mechanistically-distinct antibiotics. Clarification of the role(s) of reactive oxygen species and ADP, as well as discrepancies with existing literature, would strengthen the model proposed. The data are generally solid as the authors deploy multiple, orthogonal readouts and methods for manipulating reactive oxygen species and ATP. The work will be of interest to those studying antibiotic mechanisms of action.

eLife assessment

This valuable study discusses a hot topic in post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis. The new score for predicting post-ERCP pancreatitis offers an idea about the risk of pancreatitis before the procedure. Although most scores depend on intraprocedural manoeuvres, such as the number of attempts to cannulate the papilla, this is a solid retrospective single-center study in one country. To be validated, this score should be done in many countries and on large numbers of patients, nevertheless, this paper should interest gastrointestinal endoscopists.

eLife assessment

This valuable study combines electrophysiology experiments and modeling to investigate the encoding of dynamic patterns of polarized light by identified neurons of the bumblebee central complex. The scientific question and methodology are compelling. However, the evidence supporting the authors' conclusions is incomplete without more comprehensive statistical analyses.

eLife assessment

This important study combines multiple techniques to investigate how caspase activity regulates non-lethal caspase-dependent processes. Through a combination of various approaches, and the development of new techniques, the authors provide compelling evidence supporting the claim that Fas3G-overexpression promotes non-lethal caspase activation in olfactory receptor neurons.

eLife assessment

This important study demonstrates that interferon beta stimulation induces WTAP transition from aggregates to liquid droplets, coordinating m6A modification of a subset of mRNAs that encode interferon-stimulated genes and restricting their expression. The evidence presented is solid, supported by microscopy, immunoprecipitations, m6A sequencing, and ChIP, to show that WTAP phosphorylation controls phase transition and its interaction with STAT1 and the methyltransferase complex.

eLife assessment

This useful study investigates the role of Complement 3a Receptor 1 (C3aR) in the pathogenesis of Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) using mouse models with specific target deletions in various cell types. While the relevance of C3aR in inflammatory contexts has been established, the authors provide helpful but incomplete evidence that C3aR does not contribute significantly to MASLD pathogenesis in their models, a claim that would require additional experiments for support.

eLife assessment

This potentially valuable study examines the role of IL17-producing Ly6G PMNs as a reservoir for Mycobacterium tuberculosis to evade host killing activated by BCG immunisation. The authors report that IL17-producing polymorphonuclear neutrophils harbour a significant bacterial load in both wild-type and IFNg-/- mice and that targeting IL17 and Cox2 improved disease outcomes whilst enhancing BCG efficacy. Although the authors suggest that targeting these pathways may improve disease outcomes in humans, the evidence as it stands is incomplete and requires additional experimentation for the study to realise its full impact.

eLife assessment

Using microscopy experiments and theoretical modelling, the authors present convincing evidence of cellular coordination in the gliding filamentous cyanobacterium Fluctiforma draycotensis. The results are important for the understanding of cyanobacterial motility and the underlying molecular and mechanical pathways of cellular coordination.

eLife assessment

This study focuses on the role of a T-cell-specific receptor, ctla-4, in a new zebrafish model of IBD-like phenotype. Although implicated in IBD diseases, the function of ctla-4 has been hard to study in mice as the KO is lethal. Ctla-4 mutant zebrafish exhibited significant intestinal inflammation and dysbiosis, mirroring the pathology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in mammals, providing a new valuable model to the field of IBD research. However, although many of the results are solid, the methods as provided are incomplete, without information on methods for many data panels.

eLife assessment

Leafhoppers coat their body surface with nanoparticles, called brochosomes, which are an evolutionary innovation in this insect clade. The important paper adds significant evidence for the biological role of these structures consisting of a reflection effect of UV light as a defense against predatory spiders. Convincing support is provided for a new functional aspect of brochosomes, elucidating the emergence of the underlying genes and the principles of self-assembly of these biological nanoparticles.

eLife assessment

This valuable study presents compelling evidence that a single member of the Ly49 gene family (Ly49a) provides sufficient inhibitory signaling to license NK cell activity when its H-2Dd ligand is present. There is also convincing evidence of the effect of Ly49a expression on in vitro killing and IFNgamma production. The use of the authors' system to investigate additional Ly49 receptors, such as Ly49c/i on the H2b background, could provide information on their relative contribution to NK cell licensing. Improvements to the presentation with respect to figure clarity and terminology would allow a better understanding of this complex system by non-experts.

eLife assessment

This paper reports a novel mechanism of regulation of the heat shock response in plants that acts as a brake to prevent hyperactivation of the stress response. The findings are valuable to understand and potentially manipulate the plant's response to heat stress and the presented evidence is overall solid. However, in some cases, the data are either poorly presented or insufficient to support the primary claims.