Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of gene expression and bioinformatics data, offering important insights into the roles of fibroblasts in cardiac development. The large and well-analyzed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) dataset is compelling and a significant contribution to the field, and will be of broad interest to the scientific community.

eLife Assessment

This important study identifies one way in which episodic heat exposure can result in negative changes in motivated and affective behaviors. This work positively expands the field of thermoregulation. The data were collected using a myriad of next-generation approaches, including extensive behavior testing, thermal monitoring, electrophysiology, circuit mapping, and manipulations. There is convincing evidence that neurons of the paraventricular thalamus change plastically over three weeks of episodic heat stimulation this affects behavioral outputs such as social interactions and anxiety-related behavior. Conclusions regarding the specificity of the POA-pPVT pathway compared to other inputs to the PVT in the control of observed effects would benefit from further validation. The study will be of interest to behavioral neuroscientists, climate/environmental biologists, and pre-clinical neuropsychiatrists.

eLife Assessment

This study reports a model of 8 somatosensory areas of the rat cortex consisting of 4.2 million morphologically and electrically detailed neurons. The authors carry out simulation experiments aimed at understanding how multiscale organization of the cortical network shapes neural activity. While the reviewers found the results to be solid, they note that they could have likely been obtained using a much smaller portion of the model. Nonetheless, the release of the modeling platform represents a significant contribution to the field by providing a valuable resource for the scientific community.

eLife Assessment

This useful study presents a biologically realistic, large-scale cortical model of the rat's non-barrel somatosensory cortex, investigating synaptic plasticity of excitatory connections under varying patterns of external activations and characterizing relations between network architecture and plasticity outcomes. The model offers an impressive level of biological detail, addressing many aspects of the cellular and network anatomy and properties, and investigating their relationships to the biologically plausible plasticity. The numerical simulations appear to be well executed and documented, providing an excellent resource to the community. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is solid with results being more observational in nature, and minor weaknesses relating to the lack of explanatory power of causal relationships and mechanisms.

eLife Assessment

The study presents valuable insights into the role of periosteal stem cells in bone marrow regeneration. The evidence is convincing. The data broadly support their claims and in line with state-of-art methodology. Future study on their model will help to strengthen their discovery further.

eLife Assessment

This study presents important advances in the discovery and assessment of microcins that improve our understanding of their prevalence and roles. The bioinformatics analysis, expression, and antimicrobial assays are solid, although the diverging evaluations also indicated the need for additional support regarding the sequence analysis and validation to fully back some of the claims and conclusions. This study will appeal to researchers working on the discovery and analysis of novel peptide natural products.

eLife Assessment

This important study explores the interplay between gene dosage and gene mutations in the evolution of antibiotic resistance. The authors provide compelling evidence connecting proteostasis with gene duplication during experimental evolution in a model system. This paper is likely to be of interest to researchers studying antibiotic resistance, proteostasis, and bacterial evolution.

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important finding that ant nest structure and digging behavior depend on ant age demographics for a ground-dwelling ant species (Camponotus fellah). By asking whether ants employ age-polyethism in excavation, the authors address a long-standing question about how individuals in collectives determine the overall state of the task they must perform. The experimental evidence that the age of the ants and the group composition affect the digging of tunnels is convincing, and their model is able to replicate the colony's excavation dynamics qualitatively, results that may prove to be a key consideration for interpreting results from other studies in the field of social insect behavior.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study unravels the mechanisms underlying mammalian sperm-oocyte recognition and penetration, shedding light on cross-species interactions. It provides solid evidence that exposure of sperm to oviductal fluid or OVGP1 proteins from bovine, murine, or human sources imparts species-specific zona pellucida (ZP) recognition, ensuring that only sperm from the corresponding species can penetrate the ZP, regardless of its origin. These findings hold significant potential for reproductive biology, offering insights to enhance porcine in vitro fertilization (IVF), which frequently suffers from polyspermy, as well as advancing human IVF through improved intrinsic sperm selection.

eLife Assessment

This is an important study examining the role of conserved PCH-2 protein at different stages of C. elegans meiosis. The authors use elegant molecular genetic approaches to provide convincing evidence to support their claims. The work will be of interest to scientists studying meiosis, DNA recombination, and chromosome segregation.

eLife Assessment

A regression discontinuity analysis finds essentially no effect of 1 additional year of secondary education on brain structure in adulthood. This is a valuable finding that adds to the literature on the impact of education on brain health. While the finding is convincing on its own, as the analysis was pre-registered and very carefully conducted, the impact is limited as the manipulated variable only relates to a single additional year of education (remaining in education to 15 vs 16 years of age).

eLife Assessment

In this study, the authors use the zebrafish to investigate how the microbiome affects a specialized gut cell called the lysosome rich enterocyte. They use a combination of functional assays for protein absorption, gnotobiotic manipulations and single-cell RNA-seq. The findings in the paper are considered important and the results are convincing.

eLife Assessment

This useful study uses a model of Streptococcus suis (a pig pathogen) infection in mice using an intranasal route, the natural route of infection ignored in most of the literature. The study aims to understand how capsular polysaccharides (CPS) contribute to neuropathology and virulence. The findings suggest that the olfactory route may lead to meningitis before bacteremia occurs and that CPS down-regulation may play a role in this process. However, the study remains incomplete as presented.

eLife Assessment

Fallah et al carefully dissect projections from substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) and the globus pallidus externa (GPe) - two key basal ganglia nuclei - to the pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN), a brainstem nucleus that has a central role in motor control. They consider inputs from these two areas onto three types of downstream PPN neurons - GABAergic, glutamatergic, and cholinergic neurons - and carefully map connectivity along the rostrocaudal axis of the PPN. Overall, this important study provides convincing data on PPN connectivity with two key input structures that will provide a basis for further understanding PPN function.

eLife Assessment

This important work investigates the mechanism that underlies the switch between feeding and mating behaviors in the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis. Using a variety of approaches, the authors show that this switch is mediated by the neuropeptide, sulfakinin, acting peripherally through the sulfakinin receptor 1 to regulate the expression of antennal odorant receptors. The evidence is solid in support of the hypothesis that sulfakinin signaling mediates changes in the periphery, although additional sites of action may also contribute to these changes.

eLife Assessment

This study provides a convincing explanation for why HIV-1 Vif causes a qualitatively different cell cycle arrest to its accessory gene counterpart Vpr. The authors use elegant time-dependent microscopy reporter assays in immortalized tumor cell models to show that HIV-1 Vif causes a pseudo-metaphase arrest rather than a G2 arrest. The metaphase arrest correlates with dysregulation of the kinetochore that could be explained by the loss of phosphatase functions that determine chromosome-microtubule interactions. These valuable findings lay the groundwork for additional studies examining the mechanisms and consequences of this Vif-dependent phenotype in the viral life cycle and in primary cells more relevant to HIV-1 pathogenesis.

eLife Assessment

The manuscript provides important new insights into the mechanisms of statistical learning in early human development, showing that statistical learning in neonates occurs robustly and is not limited to linguistic features but occurs across different domains. The evidence is convincing and the findings are highly relevant for researchers working in several domains, including developmental cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, linguistics, and speech pathology.

eLife Assessment

This important study uses single-cell transcriptomics to analyze syncytiotrophoblasts in two trophoblast organoid models compared to primary placental tissue, providing compelling insights into syncytialization and highlighting the utility of organoid models in placental research. It also serves as an invaluable resource for the field.

eLife Assessment

This paper contains valuable ideas for methodology concerned with the identification of genes associated with disease prognosis in a broad range of cancers. However, there are concerns that the statistical properties of MEMORY are incompletely investigated and described. Further, more precise details about the implementation of the method would increase the replicability of the findings by other researchers.