Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable perspective on platelet-mediated fibrin compaction, proposing that fibrin fibers undergo "winding" or coiling, an intriguing framework with potential implications for thrombosis and clot mechanics. However, the evidence supporting an active platelet-driven winding mechanism remains incomplete, relying largely on correlative observations without direct or quantitative validation of the proposed dynamics. Overall, the work is thought-provoking and of clear interest to the field, but stronger mechanistic evidence will be required to substantiate the central claims.

eLife Assessment

This study introduces the "Training Village," a valuable system for which solid evidence shows that it enables group-housed rodents to autonomously learn complex tasks while preserving natural social interactions. The platform is flexible, allowing animals to learn multiple tasks sequentially and supporting applications in continual learning. This approach is likely to be of broad interest to behavioral researchers using rodent models in systems and cognitive neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental work significantly advances our understanding of the circuit-level implementation of predictive processing by elucidating the functional influence between putative prediction error neurons in layer 2/3 and putative internal representation neurons in layer 5. The evidence demonstrating that neither the hierarchical nor the non-hierarchical variant of predictive processing fully accounts for the presented data is convincing. Moving forward, this line of work would benefit from explicitly comparing different theories, thereby clearly articulating the points raised in this paper.

eLife Assessment

This study provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of the neural basis of perceptual decision-making by jointly modeling behavioral outcomes and EEG signals in a contrast comparison task. The methods and analyses are solid, systematically comparing standard models assuming continuous evidence accumulation with models that track evidence without temporal integration (extrema detection). The authors show that behavior and neural signals are equally consistent with both alternatives, highlighting limitations in current modeling approaches and questioning the generality of evidence accumulation mechanisms.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study explores changes in the Drosophila microbiome in response to environmental temperature over more than ten years. The evidence showing that temperature leads to diversification of bacterial clades is solid, but additional information would help clarify how subspecies competition impacts microbiome composition and the host. The work will interest researchers working with microbiomes, microbial ecology, and evolutionary biology.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript addresses an important question in clinical neuroscience: the use of the theta/beta ratio as a biomarker of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study takes an exceptional "multiverse" analysis approach to show that aperiodic activity differences between healthy controls and people with ADHD are driving the apparent theta/beta ratio differences. From a neuroscientific perspective, this is a critical finding because it has a major impact on guiding research on the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a comprehensive comparison of human and macaque monkey behavior across a range of visual perceptual phenomena. The use of a unified oddball visual search paradigm enables direct cross-species comparison while minimizing task-related confounds. It provides solid evidence that visual perception is largely similar between these two species, with some interesting exceptions. These insights into qualitative and quantitative differences between species are relevant for evaluating macaques as a model organism for understanding human vision.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study examined the geometry of visual object representations across hierarchically organized stages of the mouse visual cortex. The use of large-scale training and recording techniques provides solid evidence for changes along the hierarchy that may contribute to invariant object recognition. These findings, particularly if they could be supported by further analyses and clarifications to rule out alternative explanations, including influences of low-level features on behavior and neural activity, help establish the potential usefulness of the mouse to understand the neural basis of object recognition.

eLife Assessment

This important study shows that action potentials undergo frequency-dependent failure along the axons of fast-spiking interneurons during sustained high-frequency firing, offering a mechanistic explanation for why inhibition may fail to restrain seizures. The evidence is solid, though additional analyses could further strengthen the mechanistic interpretation. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists studying axonal physiology, cortical inhibition, and epilepsy.

eLife Assessment

This important study by Kong et al. systematically and rigorously dissects the gene regulatory network underlying melanoma and breast cancer risk at the multi-cancer 2q33 locus. The authors provide compelling evidence that rs3769823 is a key functional variant that acts through allele-preferential binding of the transcription factors E4F1 and IRF2 to regulate CASP8 and FLACC1 in a cell-type-specific manner. The work makes a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms operating at multi-cancer risk loci.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study contributes to the field of neuro-glial biology by establishing a direct causal link between astrocytic metabolism (glycolysis) and the structural wiring of neural circuits. Connecting the metabolic-synaptic mechanism to locomotor reorientation in the dopaminergic circuit offers new insights into how energy metabolism shapes circuit assembly and function. The evidence offers a solid foundation, moving logically from molecular mechanisms to circuit-level anatomy and finally to behavior; however, several central conclusions currently exceed the direct evidence presented. With appropriate calibration of claims and interpretations and/or additional clarifying experiments, the manuscript has the potential to make a significant contribution to our understanding of glial regulation of circuit assembly.

eLife Assessment

This is a valuable study on single-cell transcriptomic analyses, focused on morphogenesis of the zebrafish inner ear in wildtype and lmx1bb mutants. The supporting evidence is mostly convincing, but incomplete in parts.

eLife Assessment

In this important manuscript, Matsuda and colleagues present a model describing the regulation of tracheal tubulogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster embryos. The authors support this model using convincing approaches that combine novel experimental results with previously published work from their group. While some conclusions are consistent with earlier studies, the present manuscript introduces distinct molecular markers not previously reported, which reinforce the authors' prior findings. In addition, the manuscript analyses, using experimental strategies, the requirement of the Dpp and EGFR signalling pathways for the maintenance of trachealess (trh), one of the key transcription factors governing tracheal development.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript provides valuable high-resolution structural insights into the interaction between vaccine-elicited antibodies and SARS‑CoV‑2 evolution. The evidence is solid; however, the conclusions could be strengthened with further experimentation and analysis.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study reports the architectural reorganization of the uterine luminal epithelium during the implantation period. The data presented are solid, although improvements are needed. This work is of interest to reproductive biologists and physicians practicing reproductive medicine.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study compares orthogonal approaches for detecting RNA chemical modifications and provides a helpful framework for improving the reliability of direct RNA sequencing-based identification of RNA modifications. The evidence supporting the technical benchmarking claims is solid. However, support for the broader biological conclusions is not as strong, and the quantitative interpretation of the results, as well as the limitations of the underlying models, would benefit from further clarification.

eLife Assessment

This important study describes computationally designed proteins that bind to the chemokine CCL25. The authors present evidence that some binders simply prevent chemokine binding to the CCR9 receptor, while one binder changes the downstream signaling triggered by chemokine binding. The evidence is solid overall, but some uncertainty remains with respect to functional selectivity due to sensitivity differences between functional assays and the degree of binder selectivity between the large family of chemokine ligands.

eLife Assessment

This study analyzes the temporal dynamics of gene expression following TNF stimulation in macrophages. The work brings valuable data and new methodological approaches to implicate the splicing rate of certain introns as a mechanism regulating mature mRNA expression. This will be of interest to audiences in RNA biology and innate immune response regulation. The experimental design is solid for the core findings, although in places the data limit the conclusions.

eLife Assessment

These findings are important because they suggest that more selective JAK inhibition, particularly targeting JAK1 or JAK2, can effectively reduce organ pathology and pathogenic IFN-γ-producing immune cells in AIRE deficiency, refining therapeutic strategies beyond broad JAK inhibition. The work highlights JAK2 inhibition as a promising and potentially more targeted clinical approach for treating autoimmunity in this setting. The evidence is solid and moderately strong, building on the prior efficacy of ruxolitinib and supported by comparative studies in Aire-deficient models, though further validation in human systems would strengthen translational confidence.

eLife Assessment

This useful study identified XAP5 as an ancient transcriptional regulator critical for primary ciliogenesis. The evidence supporting the conceptual framework linking evolutionary conservation to functional specialization in primary ciliogenesis remains incomplete. This work will be of interest to developmental biologists and to those studying diseases caused by ciliopathies.