Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study presents experimental evidence on how geomagnetic and visual cues are integrated in a nocturnally migrating insect. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying animal migration and navigation.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study investigates the role of P-bodies in yeast proliferation and mRNA regulation within the phyllosphere, proposing that P-body assembly contributes to methanol metabolism and stress adaptation. The findings are of interest to researchers studying post-transcriptional gene regulation and microbial ecology in plants. However, the evidence is incomplete, as most experiments were performed under artificial conditions, relied on limited genetic validation, and were supported primarily by qualitative or low-resolution imaging.

eLife Assessment

This important work introduces a family of interpretable Gaussian process models that allows us to learn and model sequence-function relationships in biomolecules. These models are applied to three recent empirical fitness landscapes, providing convincing evidence of their predictive power. The findings should be of interest to the community working on the sequence-function relationship, on epistasis, and on fitness landscapes.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study demonstrates that self-motion strongly affects neural responses to visual stimuli, comparing humans moving through a virtual environment to passive viewing. The evidence for visuomotor mismatch responses is solid, although the interpretation in terms of prediction remains somewhat preliminary. This study bridges human and rodent studies on the role of prediction in sensory processing, and is therefore expected to be of interest to a large community of neuroscientists.

eLife Assessment

The authors analyzed spectral properties of neural activity recorded using laminar probes while mice engaged in a global/local visual oddball paradigm. They found solid evidence for an increase in gamma (and theta in some cases) for unpredictable versus predictable stimuli, and a reduction in alpha/beta, which they consider evidence towards a "predictive routing" scheme. The study is overall important because it addresses the basis of predictive processing in the cortex, but some of the analytical choices could be better motivated, and overall, the manuscript can be improved by performing additional analyses.

eLife Assessment

This important study describes a novel Bayesian psychophysical approach that efficiently measures how well humans can discriminate between colors across the entire isoluminant plane. The evidence was considered compelling, as it included successful model validation against hold-out data and published datasets. This approach could prove to be of use to color vision scientists, as well as to those who employ computational psychophysics and attempt to model perceptual stimulus fields with smooth variations over coordinate spaces.

eLife Assessment

This meta-analysis provides a fundamental synthesis of evidence demonstrating that transcranial magnetic stimulation targeting the hippocampal-cortical network reliably enhances episodic memory performance across diverse study designs. The evidence is convincing, with rigorous methodology and consistent effects observed despite modest sample sizes and some heterogeneity in stimulation approaches. The work highlights the specificity of memory improvements to hippocampal-dependent memories and identifies key methodological factors-such as individualized targeting-that influence efficacy. Overall, this study offers a timely and integrative framework that will inform both basic memory research and the design of future clinical trials for cognitive enhancement.

eLife Assessment

This useful study provides a well-constructed computational investigation of how intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) influences synaptic plasticity within the corticothalamic circuit, improving our mechanistic understanding of how stimulation parameters interact with intrinsic brain oscillations. The authors build a corticothalamic population model that generates individual alpha rhythms with a calcium-dependent metaplasticity rule, and provide solid evidence that aligning stimulation frequencies to brain-intrinsic oscillatory subharmonics enhances plasticity effects. This insight could open a route toward personalized, more effective stimulation protocols.

eLife Assessment

This functional MRI study critically tests the hypothesis that poor face recognition in developmental prosopagnosia in humans is driven by reduced spatial integration and smaller receptive fields in face-selective brain regions. The evidence provided is compelling as it is well-powered, uses state-of-the-art functional brain imaging, eye tracking, and computational analyses. The observed lack of difference in population receptive field sizes between face-selective brain regions of individuals with and without prosopagnosia, though a null result, has important implications for the field, and specifically, for theories of face recognition.

eLife Assessment

AGC kinases, such as PKN1, are regulated by activation loop phosphorylation. This paper reports that exposing cells to high concentrations of monovalent cations induces rapid activation loop dephosphorylation, with rapid re-phosphorylation when physiological salt is restored. Re-phosphorylation is apparently independent of ATP or candidate kinases, and the paper presents an extraordinary and unconventional mechanism involving phosphate exchange between the activation loop and an unknown acceptor molecule. The findings are intriguing and the approach is logical, but the evidence is incomplete and the significance unclear until the biochemical mechanism is identified.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript makes a valuable contribution to understanding learning in multidimensional environments with spurious associations, which is critical for understanding learning in the real world. The evidence is based on model simulations and a preregistered human behavioral study, but remains incomplete because of inconclusive empirical results and insufficiencies in the modeling. Moreover, there are open questions about the nature and extent to which the behavioral task induced semantic congruency.

eLife Assessment

This important study uncovers a previously unrecognized light-responsive pathway in C. elegans that depends on live food bacteria and is mediated by the bZIP factors ZIP-2/CEBP-2 and the cytochrome P450 enzyme, CYP-14A5. The authors show that this bacteria-linked pathway modulates long-term memory and can be harnessed as a low-cost light-inducible expression system, opening new directions for sensory biology and genetic engineering in worms. The exact means by which live bacteria modulate light signal that activates ZIP-2/CEBP-2 in the worm remains to be elucidated. The evidence supporting the pathway's role uses multiple genetic, transcriptional, and behavioural assays, and is convincing.

eLife Assessment

This important study describes a deep learning framework that analyzes single-cell RNA data to identify a tumor-agnostic gene signature associated with brain metastases. The identified signature uncovers key molecular mechanisms, highlights potential therapeutic targets, and demonstrates a metastasis-specific transcriptional signal in circulating platelets, suggesting its promise for non-invasive diagnostics through liquid biopsy. The evidence supporting the findings is solid, utilizing interpretable deep learning methodologies and large-scale datasets across multiple cancer types, though some aspects may benefit from additional analysis and validation.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides new insights into the neuronal dynamics of the locus coeruleus in relation to hippocampal sharp-wave ripples. Using high-temporal-resolution, multi-site electrophysiological recordings in rats, the authors present convincing evidence that ripples and locus coeruleus activity are inversely correlated to levels of arousal and noradrenaline tone is modulated by hippocampo-cortical coupling. Overall, the work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying large-scale brain coordination and memory processes.

eLife Assessment

This work offers important insights into the protein CHD4's function in chromatin remodeling and gene regulation in embryonic stem cells, supported by extensive biochemical, genomic, and imaging data. The use of an inducible degron system allows precise functional analysis, and the datasets generated represent a key resource for the field. The revised study offers compelling evidence and makes a significant contribution to understanding CHD4's role in epigenetic regulation. This work will be of interest to the epigenetics and stem biology fields.

eLife Assessment

Dong et al. present a valuable analysis of mutant phenotypes of the Rab GTPases Rab5, Rab7, and Rab11 in Drosophila second-order olfactory neuron development. This is a solid characterization and comparison of the different Rab mutants on projection neuron development, with clear differences for the three Rabs, and by inference for the early, late, and recycling endosomal functions executed by each.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript presents a valuable antiviral approach using an engineered ACE2-Fc fusion protein that demonstrates broad-spectrum neutralization capacity against SARS-CoV-2 variants and achieves significant prophylactic protection in animal models through a novel Fc-mediated phagocytosis mechanism. The study provides convincing evidence for protective efficacy through rigorous in vivo validation in mice, mechanistic characterization via transcriptomic analysis and biodistribution studies, and demonstration of antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis as the primary clearance mechanism mediated by the decoy. The work will be of interest to researchers working in vaccine development and associated immune responses.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study uses mathematical modeling and analysis to address the question of how neural circuits generate distinct low-dimensional, sequential neural dynamics that can change on fast, behaviorally relevant timescales. The authors propose a circuit model in which spatially heterogeneous inhibition constrains network dynamics to sequential activity on distinct neural subspaces and allows top-down sequence selection on fast timescales. The study convincingly demonstrates how this mechanism could operate and makes predictions about connectivity patterns and dynamics.

eLife Assessment

This useful and interesting study provides evidence that EABR mRNA is at least as effective as standard S mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2. The authors provide convincing justification for the conclusion that the inconsistent statistical significance for Omicron is likely due to immune imprinting or original antigenic sin. In this regard, the significance of the findings is stronger as it points to possible challenges for updated vaccine strategies in overcoming immune imprinting.

eLife Assessment

This useful study uses a combination of experimental and modeling approaches to investigate the role of actomyosin in epithelial invagination during Ciona siphon tube morphogenesis. Several types of solid quantitative analyses and modeling approaches are presented that support a model in which bidirectional relocation of actomyosin drives invagination. Since epithelial invagination contributes to the morphogenesis of many developing organs, this work has the potential to appeal to both cell biologists and developmental biologists.