Evaluated articles

eLife assessment

This valuable study discovers that zinc ions can activate some OTOP proton channels, identifying a pharmacological tool for research, and further establishing that OTOP channels gate. The data presented provide convincing support for the conclusions made by the authors, and the study is expected to be of considerable interest to physiologists investigating OTOP and other proton channels.

eLife assessment

This study provides important evidence regarding the development of concept representations, using functional brain imaging to compare concept structure in people with different amounts of language experience. The analyses, which are overall solid, suggest that representations in the left lateral anterior temporal lobe differ as a function of childhood language experience.

eLife assessment

This useful paper describes a sensitive method for identifying the contributions of different behavioral and stimulus parameters to neural activity. The method has been convincingly validated using simulated data and applied to example state of the art data sets from mouse and zebrafish. The method could be productively applied to a wide range of experiments in behavioral and systems neuroscience, but it remained unclear how it relates to or improves on similar, existing methods.

eLife assessment

The authors present an important contribution to the field of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for depression by providing further evidence for the validity of the lateral habenula as a DBS target. The evidence provided is compelling and particularly strong in its use of fMRI to delineate target subregions best corresponding both to clinical and downstream fMRI response. This study provides information relevant to both surgical targeting and the mechanism of action for this DBS target.

eLife assessment

This important paper provides new insight into the effect of extra-copies of a chromosome, thus aneuploidy, on body metabolisms in mammals. The authors used various solid analyses on the metabolisms and physiology of the transgenic mouse with most of human chromosome 21 and presented convincing results to support the authors' claims. The work would be of interest to researchers who work on the physiology and biochemistry of body metabolisms in mammals.

eLife assessment

The authors present a novel and precise method for determining boundaries of cortical layers from multi-electrode recordings in marmosets and macaques. Their method requires less data than current approaches to finding a systematic relationship between slow local field potentials and spiking across cortical columns. This approach may be broadly useful to those doing electrophysiological recordings in the primate brain.

eLife assessment

In this important study, Di et al., examine the mechanism by which potassium channels are activated prior to NLRP3 inflammasome activation. The main strength of the study is that it uses a combination of cell culture work and a mouse model to address the cell biology of inflammasome activation. However, certain aspects of the study including the characterization of inflammasome activation and the evidence to support the role of Rab11a in the translocation of TWIK2 are incomplete.

eLife assessment

This paper will be of interest to sensory and computational neuroscientists. In it, the authors find maximally informative dimensions for primate retinal ganglion cells and use models based on these analyses to examine features of early visual processing that impact predictive coding of visual motion.

eLife Assessment:

This study is fundamental to understanding the intrinsic driving forces of gene losses during mammalian genome evolution, linking the propensity for gene losses to the local genomic features such as mutation rate and spatially restricted expression. In general, the study is methodologically convincing because independent gene losses in at least two mammalian lineages were identified as "elusive human genes". However, additional (comparative genomics and statistical) analyses would make the current study more rigorous. This manuscript will appeal to readers interested in the evolutionary fates of genes across the phylogenetic tree.

eLife assessment

Boyle et al identify Npy-expressing dorsal horn neurons as powerfully inhibiting pain and itch under normal and pathological conditions. The valuable data are convincing, and the effect sizes are robust and directly challenge previous work.

eLife assessment

This paper presents important findings into the response of epithelial monolayers to the combined effects of surface curvature and hydraulic stress, offering insights into how these cues contribute to epithelial cell extrusion. Most of the evidence is convincing, relying mainly on a combination of imaging-based techniques. This paper is of interest to a broad and growing community of biologists, biophysicists, and engineers interested in cell-geometry interactions.

eLife assessment

This important study uses genomically-engineered glypican alleles (Dally and Dally-like) to determine the role of these proteins on the Dpp/BMP morphogen gradient in the wing disc of Drosophila melanogaster. The new glypican null and tagged add-back alleles, as well as a Dpp mutant that cannot bind heparin sulfate moieties in glypicans, provide solid results that support the model in which Dally but not Dally-like stabilizes Dpp on the cell surface by counteracting receptor-mediated Dpp internalization. This paper would be of interest to developmental biologists working on morphogens.

eLife assessment

This paper reports the fundamental discovery of a new function of neutrophil in specifically clearing apoptotic hepatocytes by penetrating the cells rather than engulfing them without causing inflammation as a part of tissue homeostasis. This solid study transforms the way we think about role of neutrophil in pathogenesis of autoimmune liver disease.

eLife assessment

This is a valuable study that quantifies CD8 T cell movement in different tissue environments and concludes that T cells display more confined movement in the inflamed lung than in lymph nodes or intestinal villi. The evidence supporting conclusions is solid with well-defined measurements and sufficient statistical analysis. The work will stimulate further efforts to understand the mechanisms behind the different behaviour of T cells that are important in host defence against intracellular pathogens and cancer.

eLife assessment

This valuable study reports improvements in methods and tools for curating complex pathogen-host interactions. A compelling framework is described, using rigorous approaches and to considerable extent validated by the biocuration community. The developed ontologies and controlled vocabularies could be extended beyond host pathogens, e.g. ecological contexts with multi-species and multilevel interactions.

eLife assessment

This work presents a multimodal approach to ascertain links between risk and resilience to depression and Alzheimer's disease in a large pediatric sample. The authors find two latent imaging variables that may be associated with resilience to adverse life events and disease risk, which show some spatial overlap with disease relevant gene-expression patterns and neurotransmitter expression. Such findings could be important for understanding mechanisms underlying resilience in neurological disorders, however, the analyses are inadequate for fully supporting the interpretation of the variables involved in these models, or for supporting some of the overall conclusions of the work.

eLife assessment

The manuscript by Eyraud and colleagues examines the role of interactions between fibrocytes and CD8 cells as drivers of disease progression in COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). The findings that there exist bidirectional interactions between CD8 cells and fibrocytes are supported by solid evidence that combines histology of clinical lung samples, in vitro studies obtained from circulating blood fibrocytes and CD8 cells, as well as a computational model that predicts how bidirectional interactions could promote disease progression over the course of 20 years. The study, which is based on patient samples, thus provides fundamental insights on COPD progression.

eLife assessment

This manuscript will be of interest to scientists who study cardiomyocyte homeostasis and contraction. It assesses the functional consequences of cardiomyocyte-specific knockout of Palladin, leading to the identification of a compensation mechanism when Palladin is deleted in embryogenesis, but not in adulthood. In addition, the authors identified new Palladin interactors, revealing a role for Palladin in the maintenance of intercalated disc structure.

eLife assessment

This useful study uses untargeted metabolomics to help us understand how some herbivores are able to be generalists, rather than specializing in the metabolism of specific plant species. This is an important area, since little is known about how generalist insect species metabolize their food. In its current form, the study lacks ecological relevance due to the exclusive use of refined sampling procedures, and the metabolomic analysis is incomplete.

eLife assessment

This valuable study provides solid results on the molecular signaling mechanisms of CaM kinase kinase-1 (CKK-1) in the context of the nociceptive behaviors of C. elegans. The authors report previously undescribed elements that control the nuclear/cytoplasmic shuttling of CKK-1, suggesting a complex interplay of multiple nuclear localization and export sequences. Therefore, the work will be of broad interest to scientists studying behavior, neuronal signaling, and signal transduction in general.