Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

Yabaji et al. reports a fundamental study highlighting the mechanistic connection for susceptibility to TB infection via the sst1 locus, this was shown to involve increased IFN and Myc production causing the down-regulation of anti-oxidant defence genes and chronic lipidation. Ultimately, lipid peroxidation may underlie infectivity and macrophage dysfunction. Overall, the data presented are compelling, supported by a well designed multi-omics approach and the findings will be of broad interest to researchers investigating the molecular mechanisms of TB infection.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This useful study shows that stimuli of a certain size elicit theta oscillations in V1 neurons both in spikes and local field potentials, and monkeys performing a dot detection task on these stimuli show theta rhythmicity in their response times. This replicates previous findings showing rhythmic theta activity in V4 and behaviour when stimuli are presented in the receptive field along with a surrounding flanker stimulus. However, there is incomplete evidence that rhythmicity in neural activity is related to the rhythmicity in behavior, and the mechanisms underlying these oscillations remain unclear.

eLife Assessment

This important study reports that an oncogenic population in an epithelium can either be repressed or spread, depending on the tissues. This is explained based on the differential interfacial tension hypothesis, and supported by pharmacological perturbations and numerical simulations using the vertex model. The study conveys a key message, but, as it stands, the strength of evidence is incomplete, and a more detailed analysis of the mechanistic origin of the different tensions and better comparison between experiments and simulations would strongly strengthen the message.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides compelling evidence that fever-like temperatures enhance the export of Plasmodium falciparum transmembrane proteins, including the cytoadherence protein PfEMP1 and the nutrient channel PSAC, to the red blood cell surface, thereby increasing cytoadhesion. Using rigorous and well-controlled experiments, the authors convincingly demonstrate that this effect results from accelerated protein trafficking rather than changes in protein production or parasite development. These findings significantly advance our understanding of parasite virulence mechanisms and offer insights into how febrile episodes may exacerbate malaria severity.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable computational findings on the neural basis of learning new motor memories without interfering with previously learned behaviours using recurrent neural networks. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, but it would benefit from stronger and clearer links with experimental findings. This work will be of interest to computational and experimental neuroscientists working in motor learning.

eLife Assessment

This important study introduces the Life Identification Number (LIN) coding system as a powerful and versatile approach for classifying Neisseria gonorrhoeae lineages. The authors show that LIN codes capture both previously defined lineages and their relationships in a way that aligns with the species' phylogenetic structure. The compelling evidence presented, together with its integration into the PubMLST platform, underscores its strong potential to enhance epidemiological surveillance and advance our understanding of gonococcal population biology.

eLife Assessment

This study offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the role of layer 6b cortical neurons in sleep-wake regulation, providing new insight into how this understudied neural population may regulate cortical arousal via orexin signaling. The evidence supporting these findings is solid, although somewhat constrained by limitations in the specificity of the genetic targeting strategy. Nonetheless, the work introduces new avenues for uncovering how the classical wake-promoting peptide, orexin, exerts its effects on the cortex.

eLife Assessment

This study provides valuable insights into microtubule remodeling during liver-stage Plasmodium berghei development, demonstrating that deletion of the alpha-tubulin C-terminal tail impairs parasite growth in mosquitoes and abolishes infection in HeLa cells. The work is technically ambitious, employing advanced microscopy, genetic mutants, and pharmacological approaches. However, key claims are only partially supported due to incomplete evidence linking tubulin modifications to microtubule dynamics and uncertain antibody-based PTM detection.

eLife Assessment

This important study identifies and partially characterises two proteins optimised for coordinated peptidoglycan degradation during two spore morphogenesis programs in the bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. The evidence supporting the conclusions is solid, although the description of the data is somewhat overstated. After some editing, the paper will be of interest to those studying peptidoglycan synthesis and reorganisation, which is a central aspect of microbial cell biology.

eLife Assessment

This study is a fundamental advance in the field of developmental biology and transcriptional regulation that demonstrates the use of hPSC-derived organoids to generate reproducible organoids to study the mechanisms that drive neural tube closure. The work is exceptional in its development of tools to use CRISPR interference to screen for genes that regulate morphogenesis in human PSC organoids. The additional characterization of the role of specific transcription factors in neural tube formation is solid. The work provides both technical advances and new knowledge on human development through embryo models.

eLife Assessment

In this important study, the authors engineered and characterised novel genetically encoded calcium indicators (GECIs) and an analytical tool (CaFire) capable of reporting and quantifying various sub-synaptic events, including miniature synaptic events, with a speed and sensitivity approaching that of intracellular electrophysiological recordings. While the evidence supporting the improvements in the speed and accuracy of these tools is convincing, including additional information about key imaging parameters, the Bar8f experiments, and CaFire would strengthen the study. This work will be of interest to neurobiologists studying synaptic calcium dynamics in various model systems.

eLife Assessment

This valuable work shows that subcortically-generated behaviors, like grooming, can have widespread representations in cortical activity. While the evidence is solid, additional analyses are necessary to strengthen the claims associated with outsized cortical representations of grooming onsets, as well as to address atypical grooming events. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists interested in how subcortically-generated behaviors are represented across the cortex.

eLife Assessment

This paper reports a useful low-cost platform for studying mosquito behaviors such as flight activity, sugar feeding, and host-seeking responses over the course of several weeks, and demonstrates key applications of this platform. While the authors provide a biological proof of principle, the evidence that supports the validation of the tracking algorithm is incomplete; it lacks biological replicates, independent confirmation of the tracking algorithm, and data on mosquito survival.

eLife Assessment

This paper is important in demonstrating a requirement for sulfation in organizing apical extracellular matrix (aECM) during tubulogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster. The authors identify and characterize the organization of some of the first known components of the non-chitinous aECM in the Drosophila salivary gland tube, and these findings are supported by convincing data. This study would be of interest to developmental and cell biologists.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This valuable study identifies and characterizes probe binding errors in a widely used commercial platform for visualizing gene activity in tissue samples, discovering that at least 21 out of 280 genes in a human breast cancer panel are not accurately detected. The authors provide convincing evidence for their findings validated against multiple independent sequencing technologies and reference datasets. Given the broad adoption of this spatial gene detection platform in biomedical research, this work provides an essential quality control resource that will improve data interpretation across numerous studies.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding that the blood-brain barrier (BBB) may be modulated through specific modes of electroacupuncture stimulation. The data were collected and analyzed using a solid and validated methodology, and can be used as a starting point for functional studies of the BBB for drug delivery across healthy and diseased states. The work will be of broad interest to scientists working in the field of drug delivery and drug development.

eLife Assessment

This important Research Advance builds on the authors' previous work delineating the roles of the rodent perirhinal cortex and the basolateral amygdala in first- and second-order learning. The convincing results show that serial exposure of non-motivationally relevant stimuli influences how those stimuli are encoded within the perirhinal cortex and basolateral amygdala when paired with a shock. This manuscript will be interesting for researchers in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This important work by Lesser et al provides a first and comprehensive description of Drosophila wing proprioceptors at an EM resolution. By linking peripheral neurons with information on their morphology and connectivity in the central nervous system, the authors provide new hypotheses and tools to study proprioceptive motor control of the wing in the fruit fly. The evidence and techniques supporting this work are solid, and this resource will contribute to connectome-based modeling of fly behavior.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study identifies specific neural mechanisms through which HIF-1 signaling in ADF serotonergic neurons extends lifespan in C. elegans, revealing that downstream signaling in multiple types of neurons, as well as other neuromodulators like GABA, tyramine, and NLP-17, is required for this effect. The strength of the evidence is largely convincing, as the authors establish the necessity and causality of key neuronal components using multiple genetic tools and functional dissection in a well-validated model organism.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable application of a video-text alignment deep neural network model to improve neural encoding of naturalistic stimuli in fMRI. The authors found that models based on multimodal and dynamic embedding features of audiovisual movies predicted brain responses better than models based on unimodal or static features. The evidence supporting the claims is generally solid, with clear benchmarking against baseline models. The work will be of interest to researchers in cognitive neuroscience and AI-based brain modeling.