Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This important work provides mechanistic insights into the development of cardiac arrhythmia and establishes a new experimental use case for optogenetics in studying cardiac electrophysiology. The agreement between computational models and experimental observations provides a convincing level of evidence that wave train-induced pacemaker activity can originate in continuously depolarized tissue, with the limitation that there may be differences between depolarization arising from constant optogenetic stimulation, as opposed to pathophysiological tissue depolarization. Future experiments in vivo and in other tissue preparations would extend the generality of these findings.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding about how receptor-ligand binding pathways with multi-site phosphorylation can show non-monotonic responses to increasing ligand affinity and to kinase activity. The authors provide compelling evidence through a simple ordinary differential equation model of such signaling networks with the key new ingredient of ligand-induced receptor degradation. The work will be of interest to physicists and biologists working on signal transduction and biological information processing.

eLife Assessment

This study introduces an important method to estimate the probability of malaria importation with a new Bayesian approach that integrates epidemiological, travel reports, and genetic data. The authors provide convincing evidence for the value of this model in identifying the main sources of malaria transmission and risk factors. This work will be of interest to the area of genomic epidemiology and public health strategies aiming to eliminate malaria.

eLife Assessment

The findings are valuable, given that they highlight the flexible and future-oriented nature of working memory. However, the evidence for the claims about context/color generalization, behavioural relevance of context decoding, dimensionality reduction, neural geometry, the XOR representation, and the specific contribution of working memory is incomplete. The work could be reframed in terms of prospective remapping.

eLife Assessment

This study provides novel and convincing evidence that both dopamine D1 and D2 expressing neurons in the nucleus accumbens shell are crucial for the expression of cue-guided action selection, a core component of decision-making. The research is systematic and rigorous in using optogenetic inhibition of either D1- or D2-expressing medium spiny neurons in the NAc shell to reveal attenuation of sensory-specific Pavlovian-Instrumental transfer, while largely sparing value-based decision on an instrumental task. The important findings in this report build on prior research and resolve some conflicts in the literature regarding decision-making.

eLife Assessment

This study provides important findings on the understanding of circannual timing in mammals, for which iodothyronine deiodinases (DIOs) have been suggested to be of critical importance, yet functional genetic evidence has been missing. The authors convincingly implicate dio3, the major inactivator of the biologically active thyroid hormone T3, in circannual timing in Djungarian hamsters, using a combination of correlative and gene knock-out experiments; thus this provides key insights into the evolution and function of animal annual timing mechanisms.

eLife Assessment

These findings are among some of the first to identify a behavioral and neurobiological substrate that disentangles nonassociative from associative fear responses following stress, providing a fundamental push forward in the field. The evidence supporting this is compelling and uses a variety of conceptual and technological approaches. This investigation will be of interest to neuroscientists and behaviourists broadly, as well as clinicians for its relevance to post-traumatic stress disorder.

eLife Assessment

The authors show that innate defensive behavior in mice is shaped by threat intensity, reward value, and social hierarchy, highlighting how value and social context influence instinctive decisions. The authors provide a valuable characterization of escape behavior which approximates naturalistic conditions. Despite minor methodological limitations, the work provides a solid foundation for future investigation of how reward and social context interact to influence behavior.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a theoretical framework for building continuous attractor networks that integrate with a wide range of topologies, which are of increasing relevance to neuroscientists. While the work offers solid evidence for most claims, the evidence supporting biological plausibility and key claims - such as the existence of a continuum of stable states and robustness across geometries - is currently incomplete and would benefit from further analysis or discussion. The study will be of interest to computational and systems neuroscientists working on neural dynamics and network models of cognition.

eLife Assessment

Avoidance of UV and blue light by the nematode C. elegans is mediated by the unusual transmembrane protein LITE-1, a non-canonical photoreceptor. In this valuable work, the authors provide convincing evidence that LITE-1 function is also required for avoidance of very high concentrations of the food-associated cue diacetyl, suggesting that it may also function as a diacetyl chemoreceptor. While the evidence for this idea is incomplete, these intriguing findings suggest an unexpected complexity in the function of this unusual photoreceptor.

eLife Assessment

This study examines how the neuronal cytoskeleton contributes to the formation of the axonal membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS) in embryonic dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, using STED imaging. Conclusions are supported by convincing methods, data, and analyses. This useful work confirms previous data and improves our understanding of the roles of microtubules and actin dynamics in the chronological recruitment of MPS components.

eLife Assessment

This is a methodologically rich manuscript that is important for revealing the center-surround inhibition profile of expectation in orientation space. The analyses are compelling in validating the critical role of predictive coding feedback. The findings provide novel insights into how expectation optimizes perception via enhancement and suppression.

eLife Assessment

This study introduces a valuable simulation-based inference (SBI) framework to identify degenerate compensatory mechanisms that stabilize network activity despite neuronal hyperexcitability, a feature common to many brain disorders. By estimating posterior distributions of network parameters, the authors highlight factors such as threshold potential and interneuron-to-principal cell connectivity as key compensators for increased intrinsic excitability and interneuron loss. While the approach is promising and could become a key tool for probing network degeneracy, the study is currently incomplete. To fully realize its potential, the framework requires improved scalability and more rigorous cross-validation.

eLife Assessment

This study provides valuable insights into humans' ability to generalize knowledge of learned graph structures to new experiences that share the same structure but are built from different stimuli. However, the evidence for the authors' claims is incomplete, with the main claims of structural generalization and compositionality only partially supported by MEG and behavioral data. This study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists studying structure learning and generalization.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study used genetic and pharmacological manipulations of insulin/IGF signaling to address the role of insulin/IGF axis in the function of renal glomerular podocyte. Solid data are presented to demonstrate that co-inhibition of insulin/IGF signaling in podocytes led to aberrant splicing of mRNAs, which could contribute to the loss of podocytes in vitro and in vivo in mice. In light of the fact that IR/IGF-1R signaling are critically required for normal development and growth in multiple cells and organs, the lack of the assessment of developmental phenotype of podocytes in the mouse model limits the interpretation of the data.

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

eLife Assessment

This paper performs a valuable critical reassessment of anatomical and functional data, proposing a reclassification of the mouse visual cortex in which almost all the higher visual areas are consolidated into a single area V2. However, the evidence supporting this unification is incomplete, as the key experimental observations that the model attempts to reproduce do not accurately reflect the literature. This study will likely be of interest to neuroscientists focused on the mouse visual cortex and the evolution of cortical organization.

eLife Assessment

In their important manuscript, Gangadharan, Kober and Rice focus on how Stu2/XMAP215-family microtubule polymerases use their TOG domains to catalytically promote microtubule growth, testing whether their mechanism follows an enzyme-like kinetic model similar to that of actin polymerases. The authors integrate measurements including microtubule polymerization rates and TOG-tubulin binding kinetics to convincingly show that Stu2 follows an enzyme-like model where tight tubulin binding enables efficient polymerization, revealing a shared mechanism with actin polymerases despite their evolutionary divergence. This work will be of general interest to the cell biology and biophysics communities.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript revisits the well-studied KdpFABC potassium transport system from bacteria with a convincing set of new higher resolution structures, a protein expression strategy that permits purification of the active wildtype protein, and insight obtained from mutagenesis and activity assays. The thorough and thoughtful mechanistic analyses make this a valuable contribution to the membrane transport field.

eLife Assessment

This important study reports that two distinct waves of ovarian follicles contribute to oocyte production in mice. The paper provides large amounts of data that will benefit future studies, although the methods and analysis are considered incomplete at present. Justification for the criteria of wave 1 follicles would benefit from further explanation and discussion. This work will be of interest to ovarian biologists and physicians working on female infertility.

eLife Assessment

This important study tackles an interesting aspect of fungal physiology: how a mitochondria-associated gene influences production of the secondary metabolite DON and fungicide sensitivity. The authors have improved the manuscript and the supporting evidence is convincing.