Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study offers a valuable contribution to understanding how working memory (WM) shapes neural processing in extrastriate cortex. By applying spectral decomposition to LFP recordings from primate middle temporal area (MT) during a spatial WM task, the authors show that lower-frequency components (theta, alpha, and beta, but not gamma or high-gamma) correlate with trial-by-trial gain modulation of visually evoked responses. However, certain aspects of the gain-modulation and statistical analyses are incomplete. A clearer and more comprehensive description of these components would substantially strengthen the manuscript.

eLife Assessment

This important study establishes the first vertebrate models of DeSanto-Shinawi Syndrome, revealing conserved craniofacial and social and behavioral phenotypes across mouse and zebrafish that mirror key clinical features. The convincing evidence is supported by behavioral, anatomical, and molecular analyses of Wac animal mutants. This study sets a baseline for future mechanistic studies and reports a platform to test approaches to reverse phenotypes.

eLife Assessment

This important study presents an impressive large-scale effort to assess the reproducibility of published findings in the field of Drosophila immunity. The authors analyse 400 papers published between 1959 and 2011, and assess how many of the claims in these papers have been tested in subsequent publications. In a companion article they report the results of experiments to test a subset of the claims that, according to the literature, have not been tested. The present article also explores if various factors related to authors, institutions and journals influence reproducibility in this field. The evidence supporting the claims is solid, but there is considerable scope for strengthening and extending the analysis. The limitations inherent to evaluating reproducibility based on the published literature should also be acknowledged.

eLife Assessment

This work significantly advances our understanding of chromatin organization within regions of repetitive sequences in the parasitic protozoan Trypanosoma brucei. Using cutting edge interdisciplinary tools, the authors provide compelling evidence for two discrete types of repetitive DNA element-associated proteins- one set involved in essential centromere function; and, the other involved in glycoprotein antigenic variation via homologous recombination. Thus, these fundamental findings have implications for this parasite's biology, and for therapeutic targeting in kinetoplastid diseases. This work will be exciting to those in the centromere/mitosis and parasite immunity fields.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This important study demonstrates that in Drosophila melanogaster, tachykinin (Tk) expression is regulated by the microbiota. The authors present convincing evidence that axenic flies raised with no microbiota are longer-lived than conventionally reared animals, and that Tk expression and Tk receptors in the nervous system are required for this effect. They further test individual bacterial strains for their role in these effects and connect the effect to loss of lipid stores and suggest that FOXO may be involved in the phenotype, results that are of interest to the fields of environmental perception, host microbiome interactions, and geroscience.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This study identifies the uncharacterised protein FAM53C as a novel, potential regulator of the G1/S cell cycle transition, linking its function to the DYRK1A kinase and the RB/p53 pathways. The work is valuable and of interest to the cell cycle field, leveraging a strong computational screen to identify a new candidate. The findings are solid, although confidence in the siRNA depletion phenotypes would have been higher with rescue experiments using an siRNA-resistant cDNA.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This paper demonstrates that a genetic code expansion to tag two amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) proteins associated with stress granules is useful in an experimental context. The data are solid and demonstrate the feasibility of using ANAP-fluorescence for live cell imaging.

eLife Assessment

This study presents important findings describing the early assembly of vascular basement membrane and how vascular cells switch from responding to cues provided by the external environment to those provided by self-assembled basement membrane. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing, with state-of-the-art microscopy and several different culture conditions examined. The work will be of interest to cell biologists studying the ECM, vascular development, as well as medical scientists focused on diseases that depend on vascular growth.

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.