Evaluated articles

eLife assessment

This study presents an important open-source resource for high-throughput behavioral screening. The protocols employ inexpensive, off the shelf hardware, and allow real-time analysis of hundreds of behaving flies. Although these protocols were developed using Drosophila melanogaster, they could easily be applied to other models. The evidence in support of the conclusions is solid and the revisions carried out by the authors go a long way towards providing the user with an integrated system that is also more user-friendly.

eLife assessment

In uncertain conditions, decisions are not made in isolation but are rather biased by the recent past. This new work provides valuable insights into these history biases in human perceptual decision-making, by characterizing the neural correlates of stimulus history biases and their short-term dynamics. The study provides compelling behavioral and MEG evidence that humans adapt their history biases to the correlation structure of uncertain sensory environments.

eLife assessment

This study presents the valuable finding that a cleaved form of METTL3 (termed METTL3a) has an essential role in regulating the assembly of the METTL3-METTL14-WTAP complex. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, and the work will be of interest to medical biologists working on breast cancer.

eLife assessment

This fundamental study leverages natural genetic diversity in mice to discover candidate genes for insulin sensitivity, followed by experimental identification of compounds that can modulate insulin sensitivity, and finally initial mechanistic investigation of the mode of action. The generalized approach presented here – the integration of systems genetics data with drug discovery – supported by compelling evidence, will be a guide for others who seek to translate insights from mammalian genetics to drug discovery.

eLife assessment

This is an important study demonstrating distinct roles for the nuclear receptor genes COUP-TFI and COUP-TFII in hippocampal development. The strength of evidence is compelling, using rigorous state-of-the-art methods to demonstrate functional redundancy of these genes in regulating the Lhx2/Lhx5 axis. The major strengths of the study are the dramatic morphogenic phenotypes, and the resultant altered gene networks. These findings have theoretical or practical implications beyond a single field, and will be of interest to geneticists, developmental neurobiologists and chromatin biologists among others.

eLife assessment

This study provides potentially important, new insights about the combination of information from the two eyes in humans. The data includes frequency tagging of each eye's inputs and measures reflecting both cortical (EEG) and sub-cortical processes (pupillometry). The strength of supporting evidence is solid, suggesting that temporal modulations are combined differently than spatial modulations, with additional differences between subcortical and cortical pathways. However, questions remain as to exactly how information is combined, how the findings relate to the extant literature and more broadly, to the interests of vision scientists at large.

eLife assessment:

This study offers new fundamental information on a role for the sodium/potassium pump in sleep regulation. Elegant methods were used to provide compelling evidence supporting the claim. The work will be of interest to sleep researchers in zebrafish as well as in other species for future investigation.

eLife assessment

This study provides fundamental imaging evidence from two independent functional imaging datasets, for a rostral-caudal gradient of locus coeruleus connectivity, which changes across the lifespan. The gradient approach is well-established and convincing results were obtained and validated using large 3T and 7T fMRI datasets. This work will be of interest to clinical and cognitive neuroscientists.

eLife assessment

Yang et al. investigate whether distinct sources of conflict are represented in a common cognitive space. The study uses an interesting task that mixes different sources of difficulty and reports that the brain appears to represent these sources as a mixture on a continuum in prefrontal areas. While the findings could be valuable to theory in this area, there are some concerns with the design and results, that raise uncertainty regarding the main conclusion of a shared cognitive space. The authors appropriately acknowledge these limitations while also highlighting the valid contributions that the study makes. Thus, while solid evidence is reported here, consistent with the central hypothesis, further experiments are required to support the strictest interpretation.

eLife assessment

This important study uses cutting-edge miniature two-photon microscopy to follow the structural dynamics of microglia in the somatosensory cortex of freely-moving mice across the sleep/wake cycle. Solid evidence revealed the brain-state-dependent regulation of microglial activity, highlighting alterations in microglial morphology during REM and NREM sleep phases compared to wakefulness. Furthermore, this study provides evidence for a critical role of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus as a modulator of microglial morphology through the β2-adrenergic receptor (b2AR). Overall, the article is an impressive technical feat to bridge a crucial gap in understanding sleep state-induced dynamics of microglia and its modulation by norepinephrine signaling.

eLife assessment

This study demonstrates that vitamin D-bound VDR increased the expression of SIRT1 and that vitamin D-bound VDR interacts with SIRT1 to cause auto-deacetylation on Lys610 and activation of SIRT1 catalytic activity. This is an important finding that is relevant to the actions of VDR on colorectal cancer. The data presented to support the presented conclusion are convincing.

eLife assessment

This study provides a valuable finding on the mechanistic connections between epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and lipid metabolism. The authors identified the ZEB2/ACSL4 axis as a newly discovered metastatic metabolic pathway that promotes both lipogenesis and fatty acid oxidation. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid. The work will be of interest to medical biologists working on cancer.

eLife assessment

This important study uses calcium imaging in mice to advance our understanding of the effect of antipsychotic drugs on neural functioning. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, and this work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on visual processing and psychosis researchers.

eLife assessment

This study will be of interest and valuable to scientists of many different subareas in the study of eukaryotic extracellular vesicles. The authors' efforts to improve the way we analyze EVs are highly appreciated and their results are convincing: they not only used appropriate and validated methodologies in line with current state-of-the-art but also presented alternatives to improve these approaches.

eLife assessment

This valuable study reports a complete in vitro system where different steps and direct interactions between different components of MHCI maturation can be monitored, hence leading to a better mechanistic understanding of MHC I maturation. The evidence supporting the findings is currently incomplete and would benefit from clarification of some key issues. This work will be of interest to immunologists and biochemists.

eLife assessment

This important study aims to discover the mechanisms governing the switch between conventional DNA replication and the specialized mechanism of telomere end replication. Solid genetic and biochemical assays suggest an interplay between sumoylated PCNA and chromosome terminal capping proteins. The questions addressed have implications for several fields, such as genome stability.

eLife assessment

There is a tremendous need to increase agricultural productivity with means that are both practical and efficient. Drawing on data from variable field environments, this important study provides a theoretical framework for the identification of new factors with presumed relevance for crop growth. This framework can be applied in the context of both agricultural and ecological studies. There is solid evidence for several of the authors' claims, but the impact of the study is limited due to missing functional validation of candidate species in the field. Plant biologists and ecologists working in agricultural and natural environments will find the work interesting.

eLife assessment

This study shows important evidence of the correlation between social tolerance and communicative complexity in a comparison of three macaque species. Notably, the authors use an innovative, detailed methodology for quantifying facial expressions during social interactions. The results are convincing regarding a positive association between social complexity and facial behaviour, which should stimulate further comparative research in this field.

eLife assessment

This study provides important information on the biogenesis of eccDNAs during spermatogenesis. The data presented are solid and supportive of the concussion that eccDNAs in spermatogenic cells are not derived from miotic recombination hotspots but rather represent oligonucleosomal DNA fragments from apoptotic male germ cells, whose ends are ligated through microhomology-mediated end-joining. This work is of interest to researchers working on germ cell biology and cancer biology.

eLife assessment

This work explores how centrosomes, which function as the primary microtubule organizing center in animal cells, regulate cell division by examining the process in cells in which centrosome formation has been inhibited. The carefully conducted experiments provide convincing support for the important observation that elongated, but successful, mitosis observed in cells lacking centrosomes is due to delays in cell cycle progression.