Evaluated articles

eLife assessment

This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists who study visual processing or are interested in dendritic integration. The authors used calcium imaging, pharmacology, and electrophysiology to investigate how a large, loom-sensitive neuron in grasshoppers integrates visual input to respond to both light and dark looming objects. These experiments support the finding that the integration is done by two distinct arbors of the neuronal dendritic tree, one of which loses retinotopic information. The authors suggest potential advantages of this dendritic arrangement.

eLife assessment

The complex mechanisms through which diet impact Parkinson's Disease are unclear, limiting the ability to guide patients to an optimal diet. Here, researchers use a mouse model to test the impact of dietary fiber, revealing changes in gut microbes and immune cells in the brain. This study raises intriguing hypotheses about how diet-induced changes in the microbiome could lead to changes in brain function.

eLife assessment

Sanderson developed novel interactive software for visualizing phylogenetic trees representing millions of sequences. This is a fundamental advance over previous software that is typically limited to trees with a few thousand tips. Taxonium has been used intensively by the virus evolution community over the past months and has thus already proven its utility and performance.

eLife assessment

This manuscript examines the functional relationship between neural activities in several cortical areas (such as the primary and secondary motor cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex) and the different sleep states or under anesthesia. The quality of the recordings in infant rats is excellent. Results are important in the field of research into the role of active sleep in the neuronal and circuit mechanisms of early cortical development. Some of the findings presented and hypothesis developed are novel, but the overall demonstration remains incomplete and further in-depth analysis and additional experiments are required to fully support the authors' claims.

eLife assessment

This manuscript will be of interest to researchers within the fields of haematological and bone oncology. It reveals a novel effect of FABP5 inhibition to reduce myeloma growth both in vitro and in vivo, with convincing supporting associations between FABP5 expression and survival in patients with myeloma.

eLife assessment

In their paper, Rao, Li et al. explore the mechanisms by which the microtubule-associated protein, doublecortin (DCX), functions in regulating retrograde transport in neurons. They find that DCX affects the dynein-microtubule interaction to perturb its motion. Impressively, they reconstitute a dynein-dynactin-JIP3 complex, validating JIP3 as a bona fide adaptor, and show that DCX disrupts the transport of this processive complex. This mechanism will be useful in understanding how mutations in DCX cause lissencephaly and this paper will be of interest to those in the cytoskeletal and neurobiology fields.

eLife assessment

The work by Kim et al., used synthetic constructs in Drosophila to examine the relationship between regulators (activator/repressor) and transcription initiation. By measuring regulator concentrations and the corresponding RNA polymerase initiation rates in different synthetic constructs and using a thermodynamic model, the authors concluded that that higher-order cooperativities between the repressor on adjacent binding sites, and that between the repressor and RNA polymerase are needed to explain the observed response curves in RNA polymerase loading rate. This work targets a challenging question in eukaryotic transcription regulation, where higher-order cooperativity between different molecular components, in addition to simple transcription factor binding and unbinding, is often necessary to account for observed promoter behaviors when multiple elements (repressors, mediators, activators) exist.

eLife assessment

This paper will be of interest to cell biologists, structural biologists, and biophysicists studying programmed cell death, membrane transport, and protein-lipid interactions. The simulation data presented offers atomistic detail of how gasdermin-D N-terminal domains assemble on the plasma membrane and trigger the formation of membrane pores which lead to pyroptosis. The study is well designed and the resulting data are rigorously analyzed; however, some clarifications and additional data are required to fully justify the conclusions.

eLife assessment

This manuscript reports a novel role of Mcm2 licensing factor and helicase subunit of the Mcm2-Mcm7 complex in the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into neuronal lineages. A series of compelling experimental manipulations dissect the abnormalities in the formation of heterochromatin at pluripotent genes and the resolution of bivalent chromatin domains at lineage-specific genes in differentiation in response to mutation of the histone binding domain of Mcm2. These findings provide new insights into the replication-independent roles of Mcm2. This paper will be of interest to scientists working on development and embryonal cell differentiation.

eLife assessment

Understanding the integration and contribution of different combinations of environmental cues to the synchronization of the daily oscillator is important, because it provides insight into how organisms might be able to distinguish (and weight) between irregular (or in the tidal zone highly complex) versus regular individual daily changes of light and temperature. The study, which is thoroughly conducted and provides an impressive amount of experimental and analytical work, dissects the effects of sensory conflict on behavior and gene expression rhythms.

eLife assessment

The ability of organisms to cope with environmental stressors can be modified by their physiological conditions as well as life experience. Here, taking advantage of the tractability of the nematode C. elegans, the authors find that exposure to elevated temperatures enhances defenses against peroxides, agents whose toxicity is enhanced by temperature. The finding that a key thermosensory neuron is required for this phenomenon is an important advance in understanding the underlying mechanism; further, the authors' proposal that this is an "enhancer sensing" phenomenon is interesting and thought-provoking. The multidisciplinary approach and mechanistic detail revealed by this work will make it of interest to readers in the fields of sensory biology, signal transduction, and physiology.

eLife assessment

This manuscript provides an improved version of the little skate genome, which will be of great interest to the field of comparative genomics and evolutionary biology. The authors use the genome to compare gene expression and chromatin accessibility profiles in motor neurons of the little skate and other species (mouse, chicken), aiming to predict conserved and divergent gene regulatory mechanisms underlying motor neuron development. While the manuscript contributes a valuable resource to the field, more rigorous analyses and experimental validation are needed to support the major claims of this study.

eLife assessment

This study provides a valuable analysis of the splicing landscape in colon cancer cells that have properties intermediate between those typically found in primary cancers ("epithelial") and those that are spreading by metastasis ("mesenchymal"). The strength of evidence provided is wide ranging and convincing, and supports current ideas that changes in the way that RNA from particular genes is processed plays a key role in cancer spread.

eLife assessment

This manuscript investigates how the fly visual system can encode specific features in the presence of self-generated motion. Using volumetric imaging, it explores the encoding of visual features in population activity in the Drosophila visual glomeruli - a set of visual "feature detectors". Through an elegant combination of neural imaging, visual stimulus manipulations, and behavioral analysis, it demonstrates that two different mechanisms, one based on motor signals and one based on visual input, serve to suppress local features during movements that would corrupt these features. The results of this study open up future directions to determine how motor and visual signals are integrated into visual processing at the level of neural circuits.

eLife assessment

This work offers fundamental insights into how asymmetric behavioral features in optokinetic eye movements can be predicted from visual responses of direction-selective neurons in the retina. The electrophysiological experiments and model-based analyses are carefully performed and offer convincing conclusions. The presentation could improve in clarity for a stronger focus on the most important results.

eLife assessment

Organoids mimic the architecture and function of their cognate organs and have potential as replacements for animal models. Here the authors generated canine organoids from multiple adult tissues, including endometrium, lung, and pancreas, in addition to previously generated organoids from the kidney, bladder, and liver. However more methodological detail and functional characterization are required before this toolbox can be optimally utilized by wider scientific community.

eLife assessment

This manuscript constitutes an important foray into the conformational rearrangements throughout various domains of the notoriously difficult-to-study P2X7 receptor, with a focus on the enigmatic intracellular 'ballast' domain. This is of broad interest to those studying the role of enzymatically active intracellular domains of membrane proteins. The authors provide convincing evidence that the ballast domain is unlikely to undergo major conformational changes upon ATP-induced gating, but additional experimental support is required on the facilitation process and to elucidate the consequences exerted by intracellular factors.

eLife assessment

This study investigates factors that control egg size plasticity in a social insect, the honey bee Apis mellifera. It finds that honey bee queens vary egg size in response to size of their colony, and that the gene Rho1 is involved in egg-size determination. These findings inform our understanding of maternal control over egg size, a key form of maternal investment. The work is relevant to colleagues studying reproduction and social insects.

eLife assessment

This manuscript reports the results of an observational study in 312 cancer patients to assess post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). Their descriptive results provide details on the type of persistent symptoms as well as their frequency among cancer patients. This is valuable information to inform clinical policies regarding disease management in cancer patients.

eLife assessment

The premise behind this manuscript is important and timely for muscle biologists and for stem cell biologists. The identification of heterogenous distribution of factors across the myofiber is an important contribution for dissecting how muscle stem cell diversity in a tissue is achieved. However, the mechanism of action proposed by the authors will require additional experimental support.