Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This fundamental work examines how tRNA modifications influence antibiotic tolerance, providing novel insights that may have therapeutic uses. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing. Strengths of the manuscript include the mechanism of tRNA modification influencing antibiotic tolerance and the precise measurement techniques used throughout. Further analysis of growth rate impacts and specific identification of the proteins responsible for the effect would further strengthen the manuscript.

eLife Assessment

This important study focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying the generation of neuronal diversity. Taking advantage of a well-defined neuroblast lineage in Drosophila, the authors provide convincing evidence that two transcription factors of the conserved forkhead box (FOX) family offer a mechanistic link between transient spatial cues that specify neuroblast identity and terminal selector genes that define post-mitotic neuron identity. The findings will be of interest to developmental neurobiologists.

eLife Assessment

This important study shows that orientation tuning of V1 neurons is suppressed during a continuous flash suppression paradigm, especially in neurons with binocular receptive fields. These findings, made using cutting-edge imaging techniques, convincingly implicate early visual processing in continuous flash suppression, in agreement with previous studies suggesting reduced effective contrast of such stimuli in V1.

eLife Assessment

Combining state-of-art in-situ cell-surface proteomics, functional genetic screening, and single-nucleus RNA sequencing, this fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of glial contributions to organismal lifespan. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying aging biology, glia-neuron communication and in vivo proteomic profiling.

eLife Assessment

This important study offers insights into the anatomical and physiological features of cold-selective lamina I spinal projection neurons. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is convincing, although including a larger sample size and more quantification would have strengthened the study, and the claims of monosynaptic connectivity would benefit from further experimental evidence. The work will interest those in the field of somatosensory biology, especially researchers studying spinal cord dorsal horn circuits and projection neuron cell types

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important new approach to quantifying parsimony preferences in human inference. The work provides convincing evidence that humans are sensitive to specific formalizations of parsimony, such as the dimensionality of perceptual shapes. The work is considered timely, well-written, and technically sophisticated, effectively bridging concepts from statistical inference and human decision-making.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study successfully decoded visual representations of facial expressions and stereoscopic depth information from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded in an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment. The evidence is solid in demonstrating the technical feasibility of integrating state-of-the-art EEG decoding and VR with eye tracking. This work will interest neuroscience researchers, as well as engineers developing brain-machine interfaces and/or virtual reality displays.

eLife Assessment

This important study reveals that mitotic release of an ER-microtubule tether is critical for normal mitotic progression. Manipulating CLIMP63 phosphorylation, the authors provide convincing evidence that persistent microtubule-ER contacts activate the spindle assembly checkpoint and, if mitosis is forced to proceed, drive severe micronucleation. While the study provides new mechanistic insights, some evidence is indirect, and additional experiments would further refine the model.

eLife Assessment

This study explores how exogenous attention operates at the finest spatial scale of vision, within the foveola - a topic that has not been previously explored but is of interest to visual neuroscientists. The question is important for understanding how attention shapes perception, and how it differs between the periphery and the central regions of highest visual acuity. The evidence indicating that attention near the fovea preferentially enhances low spatial frequencies is compelling, as shown by carefully designed experiments with state-of-the-art eye tracking to monitor attended locations just a few tens of minutes of arc away from the fixation target.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study provides solid evidence for deficits in aversive taste learning and taste coding in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, the authors found that Shank3 knockout mice exhibit behavioral deficits in learning and extinction of conditioned taste aversion, and calcium imaging of the gustatory cortex identified impaired neuronal responses to taste stimuli. This paper will likely be of interest to researchers studying how learning and sensory processes are affected by genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders.

eLife Assessment

The authors ask whether a simple whole-head spectral power analysis of human magnetoencephalography data recorded at rest in a large cohort of adults shows robust effects of age, and their results provide compelling evidence that it does. The relative simplicity of the analysis is a major strength of the paper, and the authors are careful to control for many different confounds - although perhaps highly correlated factors like brain anatomy still pose a slight issue. The paper provides a valuable power analysis framework that should inform researchers across the broader neuroimaging community

eLife Assessment

This study provides valuable insights into addressing the question of whether the prevalence of autoimmune disease could be driven by sex differences in the T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire, correlating with higher rates of autoimmune disease in females. The authors compared male and female TCR repertoires using bulk RNA sequencing, from sorted thymocyte subpopulations in pediatric and adult human thymuses; however, the analyses provided do not provide sufficient discrimination, as paired TCR chains are not examined, and incompletely support the central claims regarding sex differences in the TCR repertoire and potential autoimmune bias.

eLife Assessment

This important study investigates how structurally diverse cardenolide toxins in tropical milkweed, especially mixtures containing nitrogen- and sulfur-containing variants, influence monarch caterpillar feeding, growth, and toxin sequestration. The experiments provide solid evidence that chemical diversity within a single group of plant toxins can have combined effects on even highly specialized herbivores that differ from the effects of each toxin alone. However, as the mixture design does not fully separate true diversity effects from the influence of the N,S-cardenolides themselves and the ecological basis for the chosen natural ratios remains weakly justified. As a result, the broader conclusions would require more fully justified concentration regimes, mixture treatments that exclude N,S-cardenolides, and tests on living plants and non-adapted herbivores to firmly support the proposed coevolutionary interpretation.

eLife Assessment

This useful study raises interesting questions but provides inadequate evidence of an association between atovaquone-proguanil use (as well as toxoplasmosis seropositivity) and reduced Alzheimer's dementia risk. The findings are intriguing but they are correlative and hypothesis-generating with the strong possibility of residual confounding.

[Note: The final version has been published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2026.106473]

eLife Assessment

This study offers important insights into how outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) secreted by Serratia marcescens, which carry various virulence factors, contribute to pathogenicity. The experiments provide solid preliminary support for OMV-mediated pathogenic effects, with a critical role for the metalloprotease virulence factor PrtA. However, the evidence remains incomplete, and the current level of validation limits confidence in the strength of the conclusions.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents an analysis of the gene regulatory networks that contribute to tumour heterogeneity and tumor plasticity in Ewing sarcoma, with key implications for other fusion-driven sarcomas. The authors convincingly employed orthogonal approaches, including single-cell sequencing and xenografts, to reveal the existence and plasticity of specific gene regulatory networks (e.g., TGF-beta signaling) within Ewing sarcoma, as well as significant differences that exist between cell lines and patient tumors.

eLife Assessment

This useful study demonstrates that microsaccade direction primarily indexes shifts rather than the maintenance of covert spatial attention, offering a focused interpretation that may help reconcile inconsistencies in the prior literature. However, the evidence remains incomplete due to limited engagement with the broader body of existing work and the absence of independent measures, single-trial analyses, and neutral-condition controls needed to substantiate the central claims. The work will be of broad interest to researchers investigating attention, eye movements, and visuomotor mechanisms.

eLife Assessment

This potentially important study examines the consequences of manipulating the expression of thyroxine-binding and amyloidogenic hepatocyte secretory protein transthyretin (TTR). Solid in vivo evidence from two dietary models supports that TTR production exacerbates liver injury, whereas the evidence for a link between TTR production, uptake, and calcium dysregulation is incomplete. If the findings are confirmed, they would provide evidence for a novel cell biological pathway of liver injury.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental work advances our understanding of the role of human hippocampal theta oscillations in memory encoding and retrieval. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, using both scopolamine administration and intracranial EEG recordings. This work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and has translational implications.

eLife Assessment

The authors adapt sequencing of nascent DNA (DNA linked to an RNA primer, "SNS-Seq") to map DNA replication origins in Trypanosoma brucei. The main impact of this work is reporting a new set of putative origins, which do not overlap with previously reported origins, but which appear to overlap with previously mapped DNA-RNA hybrid (R-loops). Thus, these valuable findings open up new avenues for further investigation into the mechanistic basis for firing of replication forks in this organism. However, the supporting evidence remains incomplete and would benefit from orthogonal validation. This work will be of interest to those studying DNA replication and epigenetic regulation of fork origins.