Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This important study provides convincing evidence that the Kinesin protein family member KIF7 regulates the development of the cerebral cortex and its connectivity and the specificity of Sonic Hedgehog signaling by controlling the details of Gli repressor vs activator functions. This study provides new insights into general aspects of cortical development.

eLife Assessment

In this useful study, the authors utilize published scRNA-seq data to highlight the potential importance of mast cells (MCs) in TB granulomas, presenting a solid comparative assessment of chymase- and tryptase-expressing MCs in the lungs of Mycobacterium tuberculosis-infected individuals and non-human primates. While the authors appropriately discussed the inconsistencies across models, adoptive transfer experiments in MC-deficient mice would substantially strengthen the causal link between MCs and TB outcomes, providing more direct functional validation of the proposed role of MCs in TB pathogenesis.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study provides in-vivo evidence that CCR4 regulates the early inflammatory response during atherosclerotic plaque formation. The authors propose that altered T-cell response plays a role in this process, shedding light on mechanisms that may be of interest to medical biologists, biochemists, cell biologists, and immunologists. The work is currently considered incomplete pending textual changes and the inclusion of proper controls.

eLife Assessment

This study describes a useful technique to improve imaging depth using confocal microscopy for imaging large, cleared samples. The work is supported by solid findings and will be of broad interest to many microscopical researchers in different fields who want a cost effective way to image deep into samples.

eLife Assessment

This timely and important study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning to examine the neural correlates of how group identification influences collective behavior. The work provides solid evidence to indicate that the synchronization of brain activity between different people underlies collective performance and that changes in brain activity patterns within individuals may, in turn, underlie this between-person synchrony, although the order in which different task stages were completed could not be counter-balanced. This study will be of interest to researchers investigating the neuroscience of social behaviour.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding on the mechanism of self-prioritization by revealing the influence of self-associations on early attentional selection. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although inclusion of a discussion about the generalization and limitation would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to researchers in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This important study advances our understanding of the role of dopamine in modulating pair bonding in mandarin voles by examining dopamine signaling within the nucleus accumbens across various social stimuli using state-of-the-art causal perturbations. The evidence supporting the findings is compelling, particularly cutting-edge approaches for measuring dopamine release as well as the activity of dopamine receptor populations during social bonding. Some concerns remain about the statistical analyses.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study investigates both online responses to, and offline replay of, visual motion sequences. Sophisticated MEG analyses provide convincing evidence for both feature-specific and non-specific sequence representations. These intriguing findings will be of interest to perception and learning researchers alike.

eLife Assessment

This study focuses on a previously reported positive correlation between translational efficiency and protein noise. Using mathematical modeling and analysis of experimental data the authors reach the valuable conclusion that this phenomenon arises due to ribosomal demand. While some aspects of the work appear to be incomplete, the results have the potential to be of value and interest to the field of gene expression.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding on how the interplay between transcription factors SOX2 and OCT4 establishes the pluripotency network in early mouse embryos. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although inclusion of additional omics data would further strengthen the study. The work will be of interest to biologists working on embryonic development and gene regulation.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study provides a detailed picture of the synapse distributions for a set of visual projection neurons and their downstream partners, in combination with multi-compartmental modelling fitted to electrophysiological data. The model reveals interesting consequences of synapse topography for neuronal computation. The analysis, however, seems incomplete as the authors only analyze passive models of these spiking neurons, and do not attempt to connect their analysis to the bigger picture at the behavioral level.

eLife Assessment

This important study shows that Toxoplasma gondii uses paracrine mechanisms, in addition to cell-intrinsic methods, to evade the host immune system, with MYR1 playing a key role in transporting effector molecules into host cells. The authors present convincing evidence that in vivo, MYR1-deficient parasites can be rescued by wild-type parasites, revealing a limitation in pooled CRISPR screens, where such paracrine effects may obscure the identification of key parasite pathways involved in immune evasion

eLife Assessment

This is an important study that addresses the role of fever as a conserved response to viral infection. It demonstrates that the heat-shock factor, HSF1, is activated by increased temperature during fever to enhance the anti-viral immune response. The data provides compelling evidence for the conclusions and the work will be of interest to virologists, immunologists, and cell biologists.

eLife Assessment

This important study analyzes a large dataset of Salmonella gallinarum whole-genome sequences and provides findings regarding the population structure of this avian-specific pathogen. The convincing results indicate regional adaptation of the mobilome-driven resistome and a role in the evolutionary trajectory of this pathogen that will interest microbiologists and researchers working on genomics, evolution, and antimicrobial resistance.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study on Pseudomonas subverting host immunity identifies a new immune evasion strategy. There is solid evidence for the cleavage of VgrG2B by Caspase 11 and the generation of fragments that inhibit activity of the NLRP3 inflammasome. This work should be of interest to immunologists and microbiologists.

eLife Assessment

This important study reports a detailed quantification of the population dynamics of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in mice. Bacterial burden and founding population sizes across various organs were quantified, revealing pathways of dissemination and reseeding of the gastrointestinal tract from systemic organs. Using various techniques, including genetic distance measurements, the authors present compelling evidence to support their conclusions, thus presenting new knowledge that will be of broad interest to scientists focusing on infectious diseases.

eLife Assessment

This important study contributes to our understanding of how epithelial cells establish polarity by identifying a hierarchy in which Par3 acts upstream of centrosome positioning and apical membrane initiation. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is convincing, although several aspects of the model remain only partially supported due to unresolved questions about microtubule organization and the need for clearer integration of quantitative and conceptual points raised in review. The work will be of interest to cell and developmental biologists, but the conclusions would be strengthened by greater precision in methodology, terminology, and interpretation.

eLife Assessment

This study provides important findings that during credit assignment, the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) and hippocampus (HC) encode causal choice representations, while the frontopolar cortex (FPl) mediates HC -lOFC interactions when the causality needs to be maintained over longer distractions. This research offers compelling evidence and employs sophisticated multivariate pattern analysis. However, while the task design captures the delayed component, it lacks the full complexity and ambiguity of the credit assignment process observed in real-world scenarios. Moreover, the data indicated that other frontal regions beyond just lOFC were involved in delayed credit assignment. This work will be of interest to cognitive and computational neuroscientists who work on value-based decision-making and fronto-hippocampal circuits.

eLife Assessment

This study provides important insights into the brain activity and connectivity underlying speech comprehension, revealing three brain states. The authors present compelling evidence by leveraging hidden Markov modeling of fMRI data to link brain state dynamics to comprehension scores, though the functional role of these states remains under-explored. These findings advance our understanding of how brain state transitions in narrative comprehension relate to stimulus-specific features.