Evaluated articles

Imaging analysis of six human histone H1 variants reveals universal enrichment of H1.2, H1.3, and H1.5 at the nuclear periphery and nucleolar H1X presence

1. Monica Salinas-Pena
2. Elena Rebollo
3. Albert Jordan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript is an important advance in the study of Histone H1s, finding distinct distributions of various H1 variants in the genome. The controls presented by the authors provide convincing evidence to demonstrate a heterogenous distribution of H1 which might reflect functional regulation of chromatin accessibility by linker histones. This work will be of interest to the genome organization field, and could additionally provide a framework for understanding H1 mis-regulation observed in cancer cells.

Reviewed by eLife

Combining array tomography with electron tomography provides insights into leakiness of the blood-brain barrier in mouse cortex

1. Georg Kislinger
2. Gunar Fabig
3. Antonia Wehn
4. Lucia Rodriguez
5. Hanyi Jiang
6. Cornelia Niemann
7. Andrey S Klymchenko
8. Nikolaus Plesnila
9. Thomas Misgeld
10. Thomas Müller-Reichert
11. Igor Khalin
12. Martina Schifferer

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The present paper describes an important methodological development that combines light (confocal) microscopy with scanning and transmission EM and EM tomography. The method expands the level of structural detail accessible to large-volume EM studies and thus represents an approach to integrate analyses of cellular and sub-cellular structures in biological samples. The study, which provides a compelling proof-of-principle, will be of particular value to cell biologists interested in the in-depth interpretation of high-resolution ultrastructural information from sparsely distributed targets - at multiple scales and in diverse biological structures.

Reviewed by eLife

Structure of the two-component S-layer of the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius

1. Lavinia Gambelli
2. Mathew McLaren
3. Rebecca Conners
4. Kelly Sanders
5. Matthew C Gaines
6. Lewis Clark
7. Vicki AM Gold
8. Daniel Kattnig
9. Mateusz Sikora
10. Cyril Hanus
11. Michail N Isupov
12. Bertram Daum

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This fundamental work substantially advances our structural understanding of S-layers in Archaea and how they are built to form formidable cell support structures able to stabilise the cytoplasmic membrane under harsh physicochemical conditions. The supporting evidence for the S-layer model is convincing, making excellent use of state-of-the-art 3D cryo-electron tomography reconstructions, although the proposed S-layer model would benefit from some additional validation.

Reviewed by eLife

Asymmetric inheritance of centrosomes maintains stem cell properties in human neural progenitor cells

1. Lars N Royall
2. Diana Machado
3. Sebastian Jessberger
4. Annina Denoth-Lippuner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript reports important findings in the field of developmental neurobiology, particularly in our understanding of human cortical development. The methods, data, and analyses are solid yet, the lack of clonal resolution or timelapse imaging makes it hard to assess whether the inheritance of centrosomes occurs as the authors claim.

Reviewed by eLife

scMultiome analysis identifies embryonic hindbrain progenitors with mixed rhombomere identities

1. Yong-Il Kim
2. Rebecca O'Rourke
3. Charles G Sagerström

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study transcriptomically profiles the developing zebrafish hindbrain from gastrulation through stages of rhombomere formation. The strength is that the transcriptomic data will be a valuable resource to the field. The paper would profit from a deeper analysis of functional aspects of hindbrain development during its segmentation into rhombomeres.

Reviewed by eLife

ACC neural ensemble dynamics are structured by strategy prevalence

1. Mikhail Proskurin
2. Maxim Manakov
3. Alla Karpova

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript posits a novel role for the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in coding for sequential action strategies and the prevalence of each strategy. These findings provide important insight into ACC function and will therefore be of broad interest within the field of cognitive neuroscience. The evidence supporting the primary hypothesis is currently incomplete but could be rendered convincing with some further effort to rule out potential confounding factors.

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Iron chelation improves ineffective erythropoiesis and iron overload in myelodysplastic syndrome mice

1. Wenbin An
2. Maria Feola
3. Maayan Levy
4. Srinivas Aluri
5. Marc Ruiz-Martinez
6. Ashwin Sridharan
7. Eitan Fibach
8. Xiaofan Zhu
9. Amit Verma
10. Yelena Ginzburg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a valuable finding that erythrocyte precursors could re-gain EPO responsiveness after DFP chelation therapy. In addition, the authors investigated iron trafficking in erythroblasts using the MDS mouse model. However, the evidence supporting the claims of the authors is still inadequate. The work will be of interest to medical biologists working on hematology.

Reviewed by eLife

On the computational principles underlying human exploration

1. Lior Fox
2. Ohad Dan
3. Yonatan Loewenstein

The antigenic landscape of human influenza N2 neuraminidases from 2009 until 2017

1. João Paulo Portela Catani
2. Anouk Smet
3. Tine Ysenbaert
4. Marnik Vuylsteke
5. Guy Bottu
6. Janick Mathys
7. Alexander Botzki
8. Guadalupe Cortes-Garcia
9. Tod Strugnell
10. Raul Gomila
11. John Hamberger
12. John Catalan
13. Irina V Ustyugova
14. Timothy Farrell
15. Svetlana Stegalkina
16. Satyajit Ray
17. Lauren LaRue
18. Xavier Saelens
19. Thorsten U Vogel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents valuable data on the antigenic properties of neuraminidase proteins of human A/H3N2 influenza viruses sampled between 2009 and 2017. The antigenic properties are found to be generally concordant with genetic groups. Compared to a previous version, additional analyses have strengthened the work, with solid evidence supporting the claims of the authors.

Reviewed by eLife

Morphology and ultrastructure of external sense organs of Drosophila larvae

1. Vincent Richter
2. Anna Rist
3. Georg Kislinger
4. Michael Laumann
5. Andreas Schoofs
6. Anton Miroschnikow
7. Michael J Pankratz
8. Albert Cardona
9. Andreas S Thum

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The manuscript from Richter et al. is a very thorough anatomical description of the external sensory organs in Drosophila larvae. It represents a fundamental step forward for sensory physiology, and provides a tool for investigating the relationship between the structure and function of sensory organs. Using improved electron microscopy analysis and digital modelling, the authors provide compelling evidence that form the basis for further molecular and functional studies to decipher the sensory strategies used by larvae to navigate through their environment.

Reviewed by eLife

Transformation of valence signaling in a mouse striatopallidal circuit

1. Donghyung Lee
2. Nathan Lau
3. Lillian Liu
4. Cory M Root

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study by Lee and colleagues examined how neural representations are transformed between the olfactory tubercle (OT) and the ventral pallidum (VP) using single neuron calcium imaging in head-fixed mice trained in classical conditioning. They show that the dimensionality of neural responses is lower in the VP than in the OT and suggest that VP responses represent values in a more abstract form at the single neuron level while OT contains more odor information, potentially enhancing odor contrast. The results are overall convincing and this study provides insights into how odor information is transformed in the olfactory system.

Reviewed by eLife

Theta cycle dynamics of spatial representations in the lateral septum

1. Katarzyna Bzymek
2. Fabian Kloosterman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In this study, the authors present convincing evidence to demonstrate theta cycle skipping by individual neurons of the lateral septum, which they then relate to population coding of future trajectories encapsulated by theta cycles. This valuable finding furthers our understanding of how the septum conveys navigational information downstream.

Reviewed by eLife

Updating the sulcal landscape of the human lateral parieto-occipital junction provides anatomical, functional, and cognitive insights

1. Ethan H Willbrand
2. Yi-Heng Tsai
3. Thomas Gagnant
4. Kevin S Weiner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The present work provides new insights into detailed brain morphology. Using state-of-the-art methods, it provides compelling evidence for the relevance of sucal morphology for the precise localization of brain function. The fundamental findings have great relevance for the fields of imaging neuroscience and individualized medicine as ever-improving techniques improve precision to the point where individual brain anatomy is taking centre stage.

Reviewed by eLife

Neurophysiological trajectories in Alzheimer’s disease progression

1. Kiwamu Kudo
2. Kamalini G Ranasinghe
3. Hirofumi Morise
4. Faatimah Syed
5. Kensuke Sekihara
6. Katherine P Rankin
7. Bruce L Miller
8. Joel H Kramer
9. Gil D Rabinovici
10. Keith Vossel
11. Heidi E Kirsch
12. Srikantan S Nagarajan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work presents important findings for the field of Alzheimer's disease, especially for the electrophysiology subfield, by investigating the temporal evolution of different disease stages typically reported using M/EEG markers of resting-state brain activity. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing and the methodology as well as the descriptions of the processes are of high quality, although a separation of individuals who are biomarker positive versus negative would have strengthened the results and conclusions of the study.

Reviewed by eLife

Cerebellar nuclei cells produce distinct pathogenic spike signatures in mouse models of ataxia, dystonia, and tremor

1. Meike E van der Heijden
2. Amanda M Brown
3. Dominic J Kizek
4. Roy V Sillitoe

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors' dataset and analysis provide a fundamental new understanding of how cerebellar output contributes to various cerebellar-dependent diseases. The observation that different firing statistics at the level of the cerebellar nuclei directly impart disease-specific phenotypes is quite convincing. The classifier used in the manuscript remains a potential weak-point, showing limited efficacy, particularly for identifying mice with tremor. The concern about classifier accuracy is ameliorated by the fact that the classifier parameters are easily interpretable, and allowed the authors to use these parameters to design stimulation experiments.

Reviewed by eLife

Representational drift as a result of implicit regularization

1. Aviv Ratzon
2. Dori Derdikman
3. Omri Barak

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a new and important theoretical account of spatial representational drift in the hippocampus. The evidence supporting the claims is convincing, with a clear and accessible explanation of the phenomenon. Overall, this study will likely attract researchers exploring learning and representation in both biological and artificial neural networks.

Reviewed by eLife

An emerging view of neural geometry in motor cortex supports high-performance decoding

1. Sean M Perkins
2. Elom A Amematsro
3. John Cunningham
4. Qi Wang
5. Mark M Churchland

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper presents a new method called MINT that is effective at BCI-style decoding tasks. The authors show convincing evidence to support their claims regarding how MINT is a new method that produces excellent decoding performance relative to the state-of-the-art. This work is important and will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and neuroengineers.

Reviewed by eLife

A preclinical model of THC edibles that produces high-dose cannabimimetic responses

1. Anthony English
2. Fleur Uittenbogaard
3. Alexa Torrens
4. Dennis Sarroza
5. Anna Veronica Elizabeth Slaven
6. Daniele Piomelli
7. Michael R Bruchas
8. Nephi Stella
9. Benjamin Bruce Land

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study presents the validation of an oral delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) consumption mouse model utilizing highly palatable e-capsule gelatin. The results convincingly demonstrate that oral consumption produced THC behavioral and physiological effects, as well as measurable brain levels. The utility of the model for chronic consumption remains to be determined. The authors have clearly acknowledged limitations of their model and areas for future study and development. As the field of cannabinoid research moves toward application of routes of administration that mimic human use, these model systems will be pivotal in assessing the effects of cannabinoid-based drugs.

Reviewed by eLife

Novel discoveries and enhanced genomic prediction from modelling genetic risk of cancer age-at-onset

1. Ekaterina S. Maksimova
2. Sven E. Ojavee
3. Kristi Läll
4. Marie C. Sadler
5. Reedik Mägi
6. Zoltan Kutalik
7. Matthew R. Robinson

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript is a useful contribution to the field of complex trait genomics. The study does have some real strengths, such as focusing on cancer age-of-onset, developing methods for this unusual trait and using two cohorts. However, the significance of findings is difficult to evaluate without further comparisons and validations, leaving the work in its current form incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Sex chromosome gene expression associated with vocal learning following hormonal manipulation in female zebra finches

1. Matthew Davenport
2. Ha Na Choe
3. Hiroaki Matsunami
4. Erich Jarvis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study is valuable as it provides information about the genes regulated by sex hormone treatment in song nuclei and other brain regions and suggests candidate genes that might induce sexual dimorphism in the zebra finch brain. The analysis presented is thorough and detailed. Whereas the evidence for gene regulation by hormone treatment is well supported, the evidence for an association of those genes with song learning (as written in the title) is incompletely supported as no manipulation of song learning or song analysis was conducted.

Reviewed by eLife