eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Synaptic Encoding of Time in Working Memory

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Gianluigi Mongillo
   2. Misha Tsodyks

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable manuscript addresses the longstanding question of how the brain maintains serial order in working memory, proposing a biologically grounded model based on synaptic augmentation mechanisms that operates on longer time scales than facilitation. The authors show that augmentation provides a mechanism by which this order can be maintained in memory thanks to a temporal gradient of synaptic efficacies. Although the evidence remains incomplete at present, it can be made compelling by demonstrating robustness to network heterogeneity, spiking, and threshold values for encoding the working memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. The evolution of interdisciplinarity and internationalization in scientific journals

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Huaxia Zhou
   2. Luis A.N. Amaral

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study uses data on over 56 million articles to examine the dynamics of interdisciplinarity and international collaborations in research journals. The data analytics used to quantify disciplinary and national diversity are convincing, and support the claims that journals have become more diverse in both aspects.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Single neurons detect spatiotemporal activity transitions through STP and EI imbalance

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Aditya Asopa
   2. Upinder Singh Bhalla

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study examines excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance in the CA3-CA1 circuit of the hippocampus. Experimental and computational modeling results are presented, but these results provide incomplete evidence to support the paper's main claims due to shortcomings in the experimental and modeling approaches, as well as concerns about the neurobiological relevance of the results.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Quantifying Intracellular Mechanosensitive Response upon Spatially Defined Mechano-Chemical Triggering

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elaheh Zare-Eelanjegh
   2. Renard T.M. Lewis
   3. Ines Lüchtefeld
   4. Ulrike Kutay
   5. Tomaso Zambelli

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study provides evidence that the integration of the nuclear envelope into the endoplasmic reticulum provides a mechanism for mechanical integration across this continuous membrane system. If robustly demonstrated, this work would open up new avenues for studying organelle membrane tension homeostasis. While the evidence is largely convincing and carefully quantified, a key limitation is the absence of data demonstrating that microinjection of cytoskeleton-depolymerizing drugs locally disrupts the target network.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Alcohol Attenuates CRF-Induced Excitatory Effects from the Extended Amygdala to Dorsostriatal Cholinergic Interneurons

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Amanda Essoh
   2. Himanshu Gangal
   3. Zhenbo Huang
   4. Ruifeng Chen
   5. Xueyi Xie
   6. Xuehua Wang
   7. Valerie Vierkant
   8. Miguel Garza
   9. Lierni Ugartemendia
   10. Maria E. Secci
   11. Nicholas W. Gilpin
   12. Nicholas J. Justice
   13. Robert O. Messing
   14. Jun Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study identifies a novel CRF-positive projection from the central amygdala and BNST to dorsal striatal cholinergic interneurons, revealing a previously unrecognized pathway by which stress signals modulate striatal function. The authors present strong and convincing evidence for the anatomical and functional connectivity of this circuit and demonstrate that alcohol disrupts CRF-mediated cholinergic activity, supporting its relevance to alcohol use disorder.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The Lipocone Superfamily: A Unifying Theme In Metabolism Of Lipids, Peptidoglycan And Exopolysaccharides, Inter-Organismal Conflicts And Immunity

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. A. Maxwell Burroughs
   2. Gianlucca G. Nicastro
   3. L Aravind

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study presents a compelling and comprehensive analysis of the newly defined Lipocone superfamily, offering unprecedented insights into the evolutionary origins of Wnt proteins. The authors provide evidence that this superfamily evolved from membrane proteins. The work is exemplary in its use of sequence analysis and structural modeling and will be of broad interest to researchers studying protein evolution and enzymology.

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

   Reviewed by eLife

7. G1 and G2 ApolipoproteinL1 modulate macrophage inflammation and lipid accumulation through the polyamine pathway

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Esther Liu
   2. Matthew Wright
   3. Andrew O. Kearney
   4. Tiffany Caza
   5. Johnson Y. Yang
   6. Valerie Garcia
   7. Amal O. Dadi
   8. Shuta Ishibe
   9. Navdeep S. Chandel
   10. Hanrui Zhang
   11. Edward B. Thorp
   12. Jennie Lin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors study how apolipoprotein L1 variants impact inflammation and lipid accumulation in macrophages. The findings will be useful for researchers investigating macrophage metabolism and inflammation. The discovery that the polyamine spermidine in part mediates such effects is interesting, but the supporting evidence for a physiologically relevant role is currently incomplete due to the lack of relevant in vivo studies.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. The influence of temporal context on vision over multiple time scales

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Kacie Lee
   2. Reuben Rideaux

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a valuable study on how past sensory experiences shape perception across multiple time scales. Using a behavioural task and reanalysed EEG data, the authors identify two unifying mechanisms across time scales: a process resulting in faster responses to expected stimuli modulated by attention to task, and reduced early decoding precision for expected inputs interpreted as dampened feedforward processing. The manipulation to dissociate task-related and unrelated history effects over multiple timescales is novel and promising, but the evidence is incomplete and could be strengthened by clarifying the measures, justifying analyses choices, and the relationship to other work.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. SoxB1 family members inhibit Wnt signaling to promote maturation and deposition of stable neuromasts by the zebrafish Posterior Lateral Line primordium

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Greg Palardy
   2. Kyeong-won Yoo
   3. Sana Fatma
   4. Abhishek Mukherjee
   5. Chongmin Wang
   6. Priyanka Ravi
   7. Ajay B Chitnis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study explores the regulation of collective cell migration and tissue patterning in the zebrafish posterior lateral line primordium by SoxB1 transcription factors. The authors provide evidence that SoxB1 genes interact with Wnt and Fgf signaling pathways to control neuromast deposition and spacing, a process central to sensory organ development. The work offers mechanistic insight into the self-organization of migrating tissues and adds to the understanding of how transcriptional networks integrate with signaling pathways during morphogenesis. However, the strength of the evidence supporting several key conclusions is incomplete due to insufficient validation of mutant and knockdown tools, lack of quantitative analysis, and unclear experimental design details; additional quantification and more rigorous verification of gene knockdown or loss-of-function tools are needed to support the proposed model.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Correlates of protection against African swine fever virus identified by a systems immunology approach

    This article has 12 authors:

    1. Kirill Lotonin
    2. Francisco Brito
    3. Kemal Mehinagic
    4. Obdulio García-Nicolás
    5. Matthias Liniger
    6. Noelle Donzé
    7. Sylvie Python
    8. Stephanie Talker
    9. Tosca Ploegaert
    10. Nicolas Ruggli
    11. Charaf Benarafa
    12. Artur Summerfield

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study provides valuable findings regarding potential correlates of protection against the African swine fever virus. The evidence supporting the claims is solid, although analysis using a higher number of animals and other virus strains will be required to further evaluate the relevance of the immune parameters associated to protection. The work will be of broad interest to veterinary immunologists, and particularly those working on African swine fever.

    Reviewed by eLife