Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

Hoverflies are known for their sexually dimorphic visual systems and exquisite flight behaviors. This valuable study reports how two types of visual descending neurons differ between males and females in their motion- and speed-dependent responses, yet surprisingly, the behavior they control lacks any sexual dimorphism. The results convincingly support these findings, which will be of interest for studies of visuomotor transformations and network-level brain organization.

eLife Assessment

This useful study examines whether the sugar trehalose, coordinates energy supply with the gene programs that build muscle in the cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera). The evidence for this currently is incomplete. The central claim - that trehalose specifically regulates an E2F/Dp-driven myogenic program - is not supported by the specificity of the data: perturbations and sequencing are systemic, alternative explanations such as general energy or amino-acid scarcity remain plausible, and mechanistic anchors are also limited. The work will interest researchers in insect metabolism and development; focused, tissue-resolved measurements together with stronger mechanistic controls would substantially strengthen the conclusions.

eLife Assessment

This important study substantially advances the imaging toolbox available to neuroscientists by presenting a tunable Bessel (tBessel-TPFM) platform that enables high-speed volumetric two-photon imaging. The evidence supporting the novel methodology is convincing, with rigorous benchmarking and demonstrations of a wide range of neuroimaging applications covering vascular dynamics, neurovascular coupling, optogenetic perturbation, and microglial responses. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and imaging system tool developers.

eLife Assessment

This is an important study that advances our understanding of the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal gait in a neuromechanical model of the Japanese macaque. The method and results are solid; the neuromusculoskeletal model successfully reproduces experimental data, and the stability analysis based on an inverted pendulum model effectively explains the effects of different transition strategies. However, the study would benefit from a more comprehensive sensitivity analysis. The findings are highly relevant for researchers in motor control, comparative physiology/biomechanics, and robotics.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study reports results showing how different neurons in the dysgranular retrosplenial cortex code spatial orientation. Specifically, the paper reports that some neurons maintain tuning for a single head direction across multi-compartmental environments, while other neurons are tuned to different head directions that reflect the geometry within each compartment. The study was viewed as likely to expand the field's understanding of directional tuning of neurons, but incomplete evidence was provided to support the conclusions.

eLife Assessment

The study investigates, from multiple angles, the still-debated function of insect rhodopsin-7 (Rh7). The authors present compelling results for its ancient phylogenetic origin across pan-arthropods, a non-visual role based on expression analyses in the fly brain, an unusual G-protein signalling pathway, and - using behavioural genetics - that Rh7 affects how Drosophila melanogaster interprets and responds to light-dark transitions. Through this, the work provides fundamental new insights into the evolution and function of non-visual opsins.

eLife Assessment

There is a perennial question in the field of birdsong: the contribution of the cerebellum to singing and processing song-related information. This study provides a valuable first step into this discussion, using electrophysiology of cerebellar neurons during a battery of assays, including singing and song playback. While the electrophysiological dataset here is novel and could shed light on key aspects of the neural control of vocal behavior, the evidence provided for the conclusions reached by the authors is currently incomplete.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study introduces miRTarDS, a novel computational framework that predicts microRNA-target interactions based on a publicly available pretrained Sentence-BERT language model and downstream classification analysis. The strength of the evidence is incomplete, as the evaluation framework relies on unreliable ground-truth and false sets. Furthermore, the analysis fails to compare miRTarDS against existing state-of-the-art biomedical language models.

eLife Assessment

This study makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how the lipase regulator ABHD5 may control lipase activity through interactions with lipid droplets and cellular membranes. By combining multiscale molecular dynamics simulations with experimental approaches, the authors provide novel molecular insights into this membrane-protein interaction and present evidence suggesting that the regulatory mechanism depends on protein conformational changes and local membrane remodeling. While much of the evidence supporting the main conclusions is convincing, several aspects of the analysis, interpretation, and discussion remain incomplete. Overall, this work will be of interest to structural and molecular biologists working on lipid metabolism and membrane biophysics.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study highlights the challenge of identifying the role of immune imprinting in influenza immunity. The manuscript provides solid evidence that statistical support for imprinting depends heavily on model choice and can be found in the absence of imprinting due to age-related processes. However, the results are incomplete in that the impact of incorrectly modeling imprinting is not clear. The work will be of interest to researchers who study adaptive immunity in any system where imprinting may be observed.

eLife Assessment

This important study introduces NoSeMaze, a semi-naturalistic platform for continuous, high-dimensional tracking of social and cognitive behaviors in group-housed mice, and uses it to show that individual social rank is stable across changing social contexts. By integrating automated dominance measures, proactive social behaviors, and reinforcement-learning-based profiles, the authors demonstrate a novel framework for examining how stable individual differences shape social structure. The strength of evidence is solid, advancing our understanding that social hierarchy can be viewed as a trait-like dimension of individuality. Yet, the interpretation of dominance in this paradigm and its broader ecological meaning remains somewhat ambiguous. This work will be of broad relevance for behavioral neuroscience and social behavior research.

eLife Assessment

IL21R, being a key cytokine receptor for shaping the T follicular helper and B cell functions, utilizes two STAT family members, STAT1 and STAT3. The authors utilize the IL21R ENU-induced mutant, together with relevant in vitro and in vivo experiments, to dissect the function of STAT1 and STAT3. The approach by itself sounds reasonable, but the main conclusions are incompletely supported by the data presented in this manuscript.

eLife Assessment

This important study explores how the phase of neural oscillations in the alpha band affects visual perception, indicating that perceptual performance varies due to changes in sensory precision rather than decision bias. The evidence is solid in its experimental design and analytical approach, although the limited sample size restricts the generalizability of the findings. This work should interest cognitive neuroscientists who study perception and decision-making.

eLife Assessment

This study addresses a key, long-standing question about how visual feature selectivity is organized in mid-level visual cortex, using an ambitious combination of large-scale neural recordings and image synthesis. It provides important insights into the complexity of single-neuron selectivity and suggests a structured organization across cortical depth. While the evidence is generally solid and technically impressive, several key claims would be strengthened by additional controls, particularly regarding the sources of similarity across neurons and the dependence of the results on modeling choices.

eLife Assessment

This important study reports characterisation of hepatocyte molecular pathways affected by a glycyrrhizin derivative in both in vivo and in vitro mouse models of alcohol-associated liver disease. The authors show convincing evidence indicating that IPP delta isomerase 1 (Idi1) is an intermediate in these pharmacological effects, via the binding of the glycyrrhizin derivative to an upstream regulator of Idi1, HSD11B1, although some more quantitative analyses and better organisation of data would strengthen the study. The findings would be of interest to immunologists and pharmacologists interested in liver inflammation and its amelioration.

eLife Assessment

This is a useful study presenting solid data indicating that the bacterial GTPases EngA and ObgE enable single-step reconstitution of functional 50S ribosomal subunits under near-physiological conditions. The study elegantly bridges the gap between the non-physiological aspects of the previous two-step reconstitution method and the extract-dependent iSAT system to enable ribosome assembly under translation-compatible conditions; however, it is limited by reliance on rRNA and proteins extracted from native ribosomes and does not achieve a true bottom-up reconstruction from all synthetic components. The evidence is incomplete in not characterizing the spectrum of reporter polypeptides produced and not comparing their rate and yield of synthesis from reconstituted ribosomes to that obtained with pure native ribosomes; and the impact of the study is limited by not including reporters to examine the fidelity of initiation, elongation or termination achieved with the reconstituted ribosomes.

eLife Assessment

This important study demonstrates that paternal diet influences not only testicular morphology but also placental and fetal development, supporting a role for paternal contributions to offspring health. The authors combine transcriptomic and histological analyses across multiple tissues, and the evidence supporting the central conclusions is convincing. While aspects of the paternal gut phenotype remain largely descriptive, and the paternal and fetoplacental findings are discussed separately, clearer integration of these elements and additional methodological clarification would strengthen interpretation.

eLife Assessment

This valuable paper describes the regulation of the association of meiotic chromosome axis proteins on chromosome ends with sub-telomeric elements in budding yeast. The genome-wide analyses of binding of chromosome components as well as chromatin regulators, complemented with the mapping of meiotic DNA double-strand breaks on chromosome ends, provided incomplete evidence to support the authors' conclusion. The results in the paper are of interest to researchers in meiotic recombination and the structure of genomes and chromosomes.

eLife Assessment

This important study reveals intriguing connections between chromosome breakage and DNA elimination during programmed genome rearrangement in the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. By developing a novel FISH approach that distinguishes germline and somatic telomeres, the authors provide compelling evidence that chromosome breakage removes germline telomeres along with hundreds of kilobases of germline-limited sequences. By disrupting a single chromosome breakage site, they further showed that DNA elimination was globally affected, which opens up a new direction for mechanistic studies. Thus, this work reveals additional similarity between the programmed DNA elimination in ciliates and nematodes that underlies the transition from germline to somatic telomeres.

eLife Assessment

This important study presents new insights into the post-transcriptional mechanisms that govern cortical development. Through state-of-the-art methodology to track neuronal birth order, the data provide compelling evidence that Imp1 (Igf2bp1/Zbp1) orchestrates radial glia fate transitions and cortical neurogenesis. The findings establish a new framework for understanding how post-transcriptional mechanisms integrate with transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory layers to control cortical temporal patterning.