Evaluated articles

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 solid evidence is supported by behavioral, anatomical, and molecular analyses of Wac animal mutants that broadly support the authors' claims, though additional mechanistic investigation would strengthen the conclusions. This study sets a baseline for future mechanistic studies and reports a platform to test approaches to reverse phenotypes.

eLife Assessment

The study presents valuable findings of an optimized E. coli cell-free protein synthesis (eCFPS) system that has been simplified by reducing the number of core components from 35 to 7; furthermore, the findings communicate a simplified 'fast lysate' preparation that eliminates the need for traditional runoff and dialysis steps. This study is an advance towards simplifying protein expression workflows, and the evidence provided is solid, starting with nanoluc, a protein that expresses readily in many systems, to applications to more challenging proteins like the functional self-assembling vimentin and the active restriction endonuclease Bsal. Data on the underlying mechanisms and efficiency of the presented system in terms of protein yield relative to other known cell-free systems would greatly enhance the findings' significance and the strength of the evidence. The paper remains of interest to scientists in microbiology, biotechnology and protein synthesis.

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.

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 and more robust quantification of some immunoassay data.

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

eLife Assessment

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The authors' approach to use genetic code expansion to tag two ALS proteins associated with stress granules has value and should be useful in the ALS field. Parts of the work are well done, but there are concerns that the evidence is incomplete overall, and additional controls would strengthen the study.

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 provide a mechanistic link between transient spatial cues that initially 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 when the neurons have a binocular receptive field. However, the evidence presented is incomplete and, in particular, does not distinguish whether this suppression is due to reduced contrast or due to masking.

eLife Assessment

Combining state-of-the-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, although additional clarification, control experiments, and analysis would further strengthen the study. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying aging biology, glia-neuron communication, and in vivo proteomic profiling.

eLife Assessment

This study offers valuable insights into the anatomical and physiological features of cold-selective lamina I spinal projection neurons. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is compelling, although including a larger sample size and more quantification would have strengthened the study further, and the claims of monosynaptic connectivity would benefit from being stated more cautiously. 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. 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 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, but additional clarification regarding analyses and implications for vision and oculomotor control would broaden the impact of the study.

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.

eLife Assessment

The authors ask whether a simple whole-head spectral power analysis of human magnetoencephalography data recorded at rest in a large cohort of adults shows robust effects of age, and their results provide compelling evidence that it does. The relative simplicity of the analysis is a major strength of the paper, and the authors are careful to control for many different confounds - although perhaps highly correlated factors like brain anatomy still pose a slight issue. The paper provides a valuable power analysis framework that should inform researchers across the broader neuroimaging community

eLife Assessment

This study provides useful insights into addressing the question of whether the prevalence of autoimmune disease could be driven by sex differences in the T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire, correlating with higher rates of autoimmune disease in females. The authors compare male and female TCR repertoires using bulk RNA sequencing, from sorted thymocyte subpopulations in pediatric and adult human thymuses; however, the results do not provide sufficient analytical rigor and incompletely support the central claims.