Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study investigates trial-by-trial intra- and inter-cortical interactions in the visual cortex of the mouse and the monkey. The authors find that activity in one layer (in mice) or one area (in monkeys) can partially predict neural activity in another layer or area on the single-trial level in different experimental contexts. This valuable finding expands previously known contributions of stimulus-independent downstream activity to neural responses in the visual cortex by demonstrating how these change under varying visual stimuli as well as in the absence of visual stimulation. While the methodology is solid, the juxtaposition of mouse and monkey data from different modalities and at difference scales limits the interpretability of the observations and forces superficial comparisons. More in-depth focus on either data set in isolation may reveal more nuanced understanding of cortical interactions rather than trying to draw parallels between very different datasets.

eLife assessment

The study presents a useful computational analysis of how the ratio between excitatory and inhibitory neural numbers affects coding capacity. The authors show that increasing the proportion of inhibitory neurons (as observed in upper cortical layers compared to the input recipient layer 4) increases the dimensionality of neural activity and improves the encoding of time-varying stimuli. However, the evidence about the role of the inhibitory population in coding is incomplete because numerical results are neither supported by analytical mathematical results nor include controls for changes in firing thresholds or subtypes of inhibitory neurons.

eLife Assessment

This study combines mathematical models and experimental data to analyse the emergence of heterogeneity within clonal NK cell responses during antigen-specific cell expansion. It comprises different experimental data and extensively explores various mathematical models, to study NK cell turnover during acute immune responses and homeostatic turnover within murine cytomegalovirus infection (MCMV). This solid study presents valuable findings and provides relevant insights on heterogeneous NK cell development.

eLife Assessment

This study reports important advances in understanding how pyrazinamide, a first-line antibiotic for tuberculosis treatment, is effective in vivo. The experimental design and data provide solid evidence that the production of reactive oxygen species by host cells contributes to how pyrazinamide is more potent in the host than in culture conditions; however, additional experiments and controls would strengthen these conclusions. This work is of interest to the antibiotic drug development field.

eLife Assessment

You et al. present an important study that applied a high-resolution transposon-based barcoding system to show the clonal contribution of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells during aging, after 5-FU treatment, and upon transplantation. The results are convincing and show that there are different categories of multipotent progenitors that are either active or indolent, and that long-term fates are dominated by clones that either favor differentiation or self-renewal. This study will be of broad interest to stem-cell biologists and could reach an even wider audience with a clearer and more concise presentation and discussion of the results.