Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study presents a fundamental finding that the JAK-STAT pathway (JSP) exerts context-dependent roles across distinct cellular compartments within the breast cancer microenvironment. The conclusions are supported by convincing evidence from multi-omics analyses. This study may inspire future studies to explore specific factors that selectively modulate JAK-STAT activity in immune cells to achieve favorable therapeutic outcomes.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript demonstrates the feasibility and potential value of using functional MRI in awake, behaving mice, enabling assessment of distributed brain activity during ongoing behavior in a manner analogous to human fMRI. The valuable findings suggest that the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a midbrain structure classically linked to threat processing and aversive learning, also contributes to reversal learning. If supported, this result would carry theoretical and practical implications for our subfield by expanding the computational roles attributed to the PAG and motivating cross-species circuit-level investigations. However, the strength of evidence is, at present, incomplete, and several key claims are only partially supported by the current analyses.

eLife Assessment

Using isolated frog brainstem preparations, pharmacological manipulation of excitability, systematic extracellular unit mapping, and focal microinjections, this study provides important findings on whether the buccal rhythm generator is a discrete anatomical nucleus or a distributed, state-dependent network. The question is conceptually significant and of interest to researchers working within respiratory neurobiology and rhythmogenicity in general, and the preparation and experimental strategy are generally appropriate. However, the evidence for the strongest architectural claims is incomplete, with pseudoreplication in pooled unit-mapping analyses, inconsistent statistical reporting, and limited controls in necessity/sufficiency experiments. Overall, although data are largely convincing, substantial revision and more nuanced interpretation of the results are required before claims of state-dependent architectural reorganization can be considered well-supported.

eLife Assessment

In this important study, Bready et al. investigate how a highly conserved long-range enhancer mediates neural-specific SOX2 regulation during neural differentiation using human neural stem cells. This study has broad appeal to developmental neuroscience; however, the data remain incomplete given the need for homozygous enhancer knockouts and biological replicates in the scRNAseq assays.

eLife Assessment

Mechanical transduction channels of sensory hair cells possess lipid scramblase activity. Membrane lipid disruption resulting from mechanical transduction is thought to be restored by flippase activities. This fundamental study provides compelling evidence that ATP8B1, a P4-ATP flippase and its subunit TMEM30B, are key in mediating this restorative function in outer hair cells of the mammalian cochlea.

eLife Assessment

This important study measures single-unit activity in area MT of awake-behaving monkeys to test the idea that sensory adaptation contributes to flexible evidence accumulation during decision making. The authors provide compelling evidence that adaptation to different temporal contexts shapes both perceptual judgements and neural responses. Although the precise computational mechanisms underlying these effects remain uncertain, the results support the conclusion that recent sensory history influences the temporal dynamics of decision formation. This work will be of interest to researchers studying visual perception, sensory adaptation, and decision making.

eLife Assessment

This important study developed a novel paradigm combined with EEG recordings to examine the neural mechanisms underlying temporal integration in perception and its modulation by prior history (i.e., the serial dependence effect). The results provide solid evidence that two key EEG features, namely the individual alpha frequency and the aperiodic slope, jointly and independently shape perceptual integration and its reliance on prior information. While additional control analyses would further strengthen the main conclusions, the findings will be of broad interest to researchers studying perception, decision-making, inter-individual differences, and brain rhythms.

eLife Assessment

Using the clownfish model, this study examines how growth, feeding, and agonistic behavior result in socially dominant or subordinate states in size- and age-matched individuals of the clownfish, Amphiprion percula. The authors complement this work with whole-body transcriptomics and find significant variation in genes and gene co-expression modules related to growth and satiety-related pathways, as well as ossification-related genes. They provide solid evidence that emerging dominants grow more, eat more, and behave more aggressively than subordinate or solitary individuals; these phenotypic differences are accompanied by distinct gene expression profiles, including variation in growth- and satiety-related pathways. The work is valuable in advancing our understanding of how the social environment regulates phenotypic change; however, claims regarding the mechanistic role of gene expression are only partially supported by the current analyses.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a real-time system for identifying multiple unrestrained marmosets in a home cage setting using a combination of facial features and color-coded beads. While there is solid evidence that the system has a precision comparable to human experimenters in the tested scenarios, there is limited evidence that this would generalize to unconstrained multi-animal environments

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a promising framework for automated spike sorting in high-density extracellular electrophysiology. The core evidence is solid, but could be strengthened with extended simulations, broader benchmarking against existing sorters, and validation via expert curation. It will be of interest to the systems neuroscience community.

eLife Assessment

This useful study addresses the interesting question of how immune cells recognise infected erythrocytes in malaria. It proposes the parasite protein PfGBP-130 as an interaction partner of the human cell surface protein LFA 1, which could help explain how NK cells recognize infected erythrocytes. The conclusions are partially supported by pull-down and cell-based activation data. However, the overall evidence of direct interaction at the cell-cell interface and downstream effects is incomplete; stronger evidence is required to demonstrate surface exposure of PfGBP-130, as well as a direct role of this antigen in killing.

eLife Assessment

This important study addresses a discrepancy between population-level growth laws and single-cell correlations. It shows, for flagellar and synthetic genes in E. coli, that while gene expression of certain genes reduces population-average growth, expression levels positively correlate with growth at the single-cell level. The measurements are convincing, and the proposed mechanism - inheritance of growth factors such as ribosomes during asymmetric division - can explain this observation.

eLife Assessment

This study addresses a fundamental question about how large-scale brain networks interact, and specifically how the default mode network exchanges information with sensory cortex. The analyses provide solid evidence for the claims made in the paper. The findings should be of broad interest to researchers studying brain network organization and dynamics.

eLife Assessment

This study reports important and invaluable findings that advance understanding of how attention is distributed between what we look at directly and what lies outside the center of gaze during active visual search. The evidence supporting the main claims is solid, with a large and rich dataset spanning multiple brain areas, although some aspects of the interpretation would benefit from additional controls and clearer separation of attention from eye-movement planning. The work will be of particular interest to researchers studying attention, visual perception, and eye movements behavior.

eLife Assessment

In this manuscript, based on electron microscopy observations of C. elegans embryos, the authors make the bold claim that the plasma membrane ruptures during cell division and that closure of this opening by membrane extension contributes to cytokinesis. Although the findings are potentially valuable, the evidence in support of the authors' claims is inadequate.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of short-term plasticity mechanisms by providing evidence for release-independent low-frequency synaptic depression that reflects a model that proposes a redistribution of vesicles within the readily releasable pool, via a reduction in docking site occupancy due to vesicle undocking. The evidence supporting this model is convincing, with rigorous modeling, electrophysiological data and computational analysis. The work will be of broad interest to cellular neuroscientists and synaptic physiologists.

eLife Assessment

This is an important study on the role of Slap in restricting Src activity and proliferation of colonic cells in vivo. The authors present solid evidence that an EPHB2-SRC signaling axis stimulates the proliferation of colon precursors and is controlled by the Src-binding protein SLAP, whose loss promotes tumorigenesis.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides convincing evidence supporting the existence of transposable element (TE)-gene chimeric transcripts in the Drosophila brain and helps reconcile previously conflicting findings. The authors demonstrate that differences in computational approaches, experimental design, and Drosophila lines can substantially influence the detection of these transcripts. The work highlights the importance of standardized approaches for studying TE-derived transcripts, although their broader biological significance remains to be established.

eLife Assessment

This important study deepens our understanding of how populations of a given species may diverge in their molecular and physiological patterns as a result of adaptation to different thermal regimes. By approaching this question from multiple directions, the authors provide convincing evidence for adaptive changes in three strains of the diamondback moth after only three years of experimental evolution. This work will be of interest to anyone working on the response of pest species to environmental change and to workers on adaptive evolution in general.

eLife Assessment

This is a potentially important work on the organization of visual information in the rodent superior colliculus. It reports that the selectivity of neurons to line orientation and motion in the visual image is largely governed by the sensitivities of retinal neurons and their ordered projection to the superior colliculus. If confirmed, these conclusions could substantially revise prior thinking in this field. However, in the present state, the methods and analysis are incomplete and cannot justify all the claims.