Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The study aims to elucidate the spatial dynamics of subcellular astrocytic calcium signaling. Specifically, they elucidate how subdomain activity above a certain spatial threshold (~23% of domains being active) heralds a calcium surge that also affects the astrocytic soma. Moreover, they demonstrate that processes on average are included earlier than the soma and that IP3R2 is necessary for calcium surges to occur. Finally, they associate calcium surges with slow inward currents.

Strengths:<br /> The study addresses an interesting topic that is only partially understood. The study uses multiple methods including in vivo two-photon microscopy, acute brain slices, electrophysiology, pharmacology, and knockout models. The conclusions are strengthened by the same findings in both in vivo anesthetized mice and in brain slices.

Weaknesses:<br /> The method that has been used to quantify astrocytic calcium signals only analyzes what seems to be a small proportion of the total astrocytic domain on the example micrographs, where a structure is visible in the SR101 channel (see for instance Reeves et al. J. Neurosci. 2011, demonstrating to what extent SR101 outlines an astrocyte). This would potentially heavily bias the results: from the example illustrations presented it is clear that the calcium increases in what is putatively the same astrocyte goes well beyond what is outlined with automatically placed small ROIs. The smallest astrocytic processes are an order of magnitude smaller than the resolution of optical imaging and would not be outlined by either SR101 or with the segmentation method judged by the ROIs presented in the figures. Completely ignoring these very large parts of the spatial domain of an astrocyte, in particular when making claims about a spatial threshold, seems inappropriate. Several recent methods published use pixel-by-pixel event-based approaches to define calcium signals. The data should have been analyzed using such a method within a complete astrocyte spatial domain in addition to the analyses presented. Also, the authors do not discuss how two-dimensional sampling of calcium signals from an astrocyte that has processes in three dimensions (see Bindocci et al, Science 2017) may affect the results: if subdomain activation is not homogeneously distributed in the three-dimensional space within the astrocyte territory, the assumptions and findings between a correlation between subdomain activation and somatic activation may be affected.

The experiments are performed either in anesthetized mice, or in slices. The study would have come across as much more solid and interesting if at least a small set of experiments were performed also in awake mice (for instance during spontaneous behavior), given the profound effect of anesthesia on astrocytic calcium signaling and the highly invasive nature of preparing acute brain slices. The authors mention the caveat of studying anesthetized mice but claim that the intracellular machinery should remain the same. This explanation appears a bit dismissive as the response of an astrocyte not only depends on the internal machinery of the astrocyte, but also on how the astrocyte is stimulated: for instance synaptic stimulation or sensory input likely would be dependent on brain state and concurrent neuromodulatory signaling which is absent in both experimental paradigms. The discussion would have been more balanced if these aspects were dealt with more thoroughly.

The study uses a heaviside step function to define a spatial 'threshold' for somata either being included or not in a calcium signal. However, Fig 4E and 5D showing how the method separates the signal provide little understanding for the reader. The most informative figure that could support the main finding of the study, namely a ~23% spatial threshold for astrocyte calcium surges reaching the soma, is Fig. 4G, showing the relationship between the percentage of arborizations active and the soma calcium signal. A similar plot should have been presented in Fig 5 as well. Looking at this distribution, though, it is not clear why ~23% would be a clear threshold to separate soma involvement, one can only speculate how the threshold for a soma event would influence this number. Even if the analyses in Fig. 4H and the fact that the same threshold appears in two experimental paradigms strengthen the case, the results would have been more convincing if several types of statistical modeling describing the continuous distribution of values presented in Fig. 4E (in addition to the heaviside step function) were presented.

The description of methods should have been considerably more thorough throughout. For instance which temperature the acute slice experiments were performed at, and whether slices were prepared in ice-cold solution, are crucial to know as these parameters heavily influence both astrocyte morphology and signaling. Moreover, no monitoring of physiological parameters (oxygen level, CO2, arterial blood gas analyses, temperature etc) of the in vivo anesthetized mice is mentioned. These aspects are critical to control for when working with acute in vivo two-photon microscopy of mice; the physiological parameters rapidly decay within a few hours with anesthesia and following surgery.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This paper presents several eyetracking experiments measuring task-directed reading behavior where subjects read texts and answered questions. It then models the measured reading times using attention patterns derived from deep-neural network models from the natural language processing literature. Results are taken to support the theoretical claim that human reading reflects task-optimized attention allocation.

Strengths:

(1) The paper leverages modern machine learning to model a high-level behavioral task (reading comprehension). While the claim that human attention reflects optimal behavior is not new, the paper considers a substantially more high-level task in comparison to prior work. The paper leverages recent models from the NLP literature which are known to provide strong performance on such question-answering tasks, and is methodologically well grounded in the NLP literature.

(2) The modeling uses text- and question-based features in addition to DNNs, specifically evaluates relevant effects, and compares vanilla pretrained and task-finetuned models. This makes the results more transparent and helps assess the contributions of task optimization. In particular, besides fine-tuned DNNs, the role of the task is further established by directly modeling the question relevance of each word. Specifically, the claim that human reading is predicted better by task-optimized attention distributions rests on (i) a role of question relevance in influencing reading in Expts 1-2 but not 4, and (ii) the fact that fine-tuned DNNs improve prediction of gaze in Expts 1-2 but not 4.

(3) The paper conducts experiments on both L2 and L1 speakers.

Weaknesses:

(1) Under the hypothesis advanced, human reading should adapt rationally to task demands. Indeed, Experiment 1 tests questions from different types in blocks (local and global), and the paper provides evidence that this encourages the development of question-type-specific reading strategies -- indeed, this specifically motivates Experiment 2, and is confirmed indirectly in the comparison of the effects found in the two experiments ("all these results indicated that the readers developed question-type-specific strategies in Experiment 1"). On the other hand, finetuning the model on one of the two types does not seem to reproduce this differential behavior, in the sense that fit to reading data is not improved. In this sense, the model seems to have limited abilities in reproducing the observed task dependence of human reading.

The results support the conclusions well, with the weakness described above a limitation of the modeling approach chosen.

The data are likely to be useful as a benchmark in further modeling of eye-movements, an area of interest to computational research on psycholinguistics.<br /> The modeling results contribute to theoretical understanding of human reading behavior, and strengthens a line of research arguing that it reflects task-adaptive behavior.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Zhang and Lauder characterized both aerobic and anaerobic metabolic energy contributions in schools and solitary fishes in the Giant danio (Devario aequipinnatus) over a wide range of water velocities. By using a highly sophisticated respirometer system, the authors measure the aerobic metabolisms by oxygen uptake rate and the non-aerobic oxygen cost as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). With these data, the authors model the bioenergetic cost of schools and solitary fishes. The authors found that fish schools have a J-shaped metabolism-speed curve, with reduced total energy expenditure per tail beat compared to solitary fish. Fish in schools also recovered from exercise faster than solitary fish. Finally, the authors conclude that these energetic savings may underlie the prevalence of coordinated group locomotion in fish.

The conclusions of this paper are mostly well supported by data, but some aspects of methods and data acquisition need to be clarified and extended.

Strengths:<br /> This work aims to understand whether animals moving through fluids (water in this case) exhibit highly coordinated group movement to reduce the cost of locomotion. By calculating the aerobic and anaerobic metabolic rates of school and solitary fishes, the authors provide direct energetic measurements that demonstrate the energy-saving benefits of coordinated group locomotion in fishes. The results of this paper show that fish schools save anaerobic energy and reduce the recovery time after peak swimming performance, suggesting that fishes can apport more energy to other fitness-related activities whether they move collectively through water.

Weaknesses:<br /> Although the paper does have strengths in principle, the weakness of the paper is the method section. There is too much irrelevant information in the methods that sometimes is hard to follow for a researcher unfamiliar with the research topic. In addition, it was hard to imagine the experimental (respirometer) system used by the authors in the experiments; therefore, it would be beneficial for the article to include a diagram/scheme of that respiratory system.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This paper investigates the evolutionary aspects around a single amino acid polymorphism in an immune peptide (the antimicrobial peptide Diptericin A) of Drosophila melanogaster. This polymorphism was shown in an earlier population genetic study to be under long-term balancing selection. Using flies with different AA at this immune peptide it was found that one allelic form provides better survival of systemic infections by a bacterial pathogen, but that the alternative allele provides its carriers a longer lifespan under certain conditions (depending on the microbiota). It is suggested that these contrasting fitness effects of the two alleles contribute to balance their long-term evolutionary fate.

Strengths:<br /> The approach taken and the results presented are interesting and show the way forward for studying such polymorphisms experimentally.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. A clear demonstration (in one experiment) that the antagonistic effect of the two selection pressures isolated is not provided.

The study is overwhelming with many experiments and countless statistical tests. The overall conclusion of the many experiments and tests suggests that "dptS69 flies survive systemic infection better, while dptS69R flies survive some opportunistic gut infections better." (line 444-446). Given the number of results, different experiments, and hundreds of tests conducted, how can we make sure that the result is not just one of many possible combinations? I suggest experimentally testing this conclusion in one experiment (one may call this the "killer-experiment") with the relevant treatments being conducted at the same time, side by side, and the appropriate statistical test being conducted by a statistical test for a treatment x genotype interaction effect.

2. The implication that the two forms of selection acting on the immune peptide are maintained by balancing selection is not supported.

The picture presented about how balancing selection is working is rather simplistic and not convincing. In particular, it is not distinguished between fluctuating selection (FL) and balancing selection (BL). BL is the result of negative frequency-dependent selection. It may act within populations (e.g. Red Queen type processes, mating types) or between populations (local adaptation). FL is a process that is sometimes suggested to produce BL, but this is only the case when selection is negative frequency dependent. In most cases, FL does not lead to BL.

The presented study is introduced with a framework of BL, but the aspects investigated are all better described as FL (as the title says: "A suite of selective pressures ..."). The two models presented in the introduction (lines 62 to 69; two pathogens, cost of resistance) are both examples for FL, not for BL.

Finally, no evidence is presented that the different selection pressures suggested to select on the different allelic forms of the immune peptide are acting to produce a pattern of negative frequency dependence.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This paper applies PSMC and genomic data to test interesting questions about how life history changes impact long-term population sizes.

Strengths:<br /> This is a creative use of PSMC to test explicit a priori hypotheses about season migration and Ne. The PSMC analyses seem well done and the authors acknowledge much of the complexity of interpretation in the discussion.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors use an average generation time for all taxa, but the citations imply generation time is known for at least some of them. Are there differences in generation time associated with migration? I am not a bird biologist, but quick googling suggests maybe this is the case (https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13983). I think it important the authors address this, as differences in generation time I believe should affect estimates of Ne and growth.

The writing could be improved, both in the introduction for readers not familiar with the system and in the clarity and focus of the discussion.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors carried out structural and biochemical studies to investigate the multiple functions of CBC and ALYREF in RNA metabolism.

Strengths:<br /> For the structural study part, the authors successfully revealed how NCBP1 and NCBP2 subunits interact with mALYREF (residues 1-155). Their binding interface was then confirmed by biochemical assays (mutagenesis and pull-down assays) presented in this study.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors did not provide functional data to support their proposed models. The authors should include more details regarding the workflow of their cryo-EM data processing in the figure.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In their manuscript "Recovery of proteasome activity in cells pulse-treated with proteasome inhibitors is independent of DDI2", Ibtisam and Kisselev investigate proteasome recovery in HAP1 cells either WT or DDI2 KO upon inhibition of proteasome via bortezomib or carfilzomib. The authors argue that proteasome recovery is independent of DDI2 as it is independent of the novo proteasome subunit synthesis. They argue recovery is dependent on the assembly of already synthesized proteasome subunits.

Strengths:<br /> The findings are important as they provide insight into a transcriptionally-independent proteasome stress recovery that is likely applicable across distinct cellular subtypes. Comparable proteasome recovery early on (<12 hours) from proteasomal inhibition in DDI2 KO cell lines was already noted in other manuscripts, including Chen et al, suggesting that this phenomenon is applicable to other histotypes.

Weaknesses:<br /> Some of the conclusions are not adequately supported by the data and how generalizable these findings are is unclear. In particular, there is concern regarding the status of the ubiqutin-proteasome-system in the HAP1 cell line that was used for these studies. In a previously published model system, a dependency on DDI2 and NRF1 was clearly demonstrated and this pathway was critical for late (12-24 hours) proteasome recovery as well as cell viability. The model system used here (HAP1 cells) seems completely independent of DDI2 both for proteasome recovery and viability as curves are substantially overlapping. It would be important to assess how the baseline proteasome activity in HAP1 cells compare to other cell lines and model system as these cells may be largely independent of proteasome degradation and their synthetic load on the pathway very modest.

It would also be relevant to look at later time points of proteasome recovery as one would expect DDI2 to play a role later on in the recovery of proteasome. the authors may have missed that time point as cells do not appear to recover close to 100% proteasome activity by 24 hours not even when the smallest concentration of carfilzomib is used.

A critical experiment to look at de novo proteasome assembly was not carried out, leaving the data hypothetical.

Finally, the authors leverage HAP1 cells for their work and should be mindful of not generalizing findings or disputing other author's conclusions in the absence of adequate experiments to support their hypothesis.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Youssef et al. have used a range of markers to identify cancer stem cells (CSCs) in patients with oral cancers. CSCs were identified in lab conditions and were often linked to the invasiveness of cancers. The authors found a combination of markers convincingly liked to known biology and found cells expressing them in the invading cancers.<br /> The major weakness of the paper is in the technical side. There isn't enough description as to how they discriminated between CSCs inside the tumour and those invading its surroundings. Similarly, the way the information is presented it is not clear why artificial intelligence was needed to enhance the accuracy of the method linking CSCs to cancer invasion (and ultimately deadly metastasis to other organs).

• for: 3 things Nora learned from her father, mutual learning, indyweb - mutual learning

• paraphrase

  • first, Nora learned what his father was learning
  • second, Nora learned what it looks like to learn and
• third, and most important, Nora learned she could be in relationship in learning, mutual learning

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The paper "Unveiling the signaling network of FLT3-ITD AML improves drug sensitivity prediction" reports the combination of prior knowledge signaling networks, multiparametric cell-based data on the activation status of 14 crucial proteins emblematic of the cell state downstream of FLT3 obtained under a variety of perturbation conditions and Boolean logic modeling, to gain mechanistic insight into drug resistance in acute myeloid leukemia patients carrying the internal tandem duplication in the FLT3 receptor tyrosine kinase and predict drug combinations that may reverse pharmacorresistant phenotypes. Interestingly, the utility of the approach was validated in vitro, and also using mutational and expression data from 14 patients with FLT3-ITD positive acute myeloid leukemia to generate patient-specific Boolean models.

Strengths:<br /> The model predictions were positively validated in vitro: it was predicted that the combined inhibition of JNK and FLT3, may reverse resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors, which was confirmed in an appropriate FLT3 cell model by comparing the effects on apoptosis and proliferation of a JNK inhibitor and midostaurin vs. midostaurin alone.

Whereas the study does have some complexity, readability is enhanced by the inclusion of a section that summarizes the study design, plus a summary figure. Availability of data as supplementary material is also a high point.

Weaknesses:<br /> Some aspects of the methodology are not properly described (for instance, no methodological description has been provided regarding the clustering procedure that led to Figs. 2C and 2D).

It is not clear in the manuscript whether the patients gave their consent to the use of their data in this study, or the approval from an ethical committee. These are very important points that should be made explicit in the main text of the paper.

The authors claim that some of the predictions of their models were later confirmed in the follow-up of some of the 14 patients, but it is not crystal clear whether the models helped the physicians to make any decisions on tailored therapeutic interventions, or if this has been just a retrospective exercise and the predictions of the models coincide with (some of) the clinical observations in a rather limited group of patients. Since the paper presents this as additional validation of the models' ability to guide personalized treatment decisions, it would be very important to clarify this point and expand the presentation of the results (comparison of observations vs. model predictions).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Yin-wei Lin et al set out to visualize the inactive conformation of full length Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase (BTK), a molecule that has evaded high resolution structural studies in its full length form to this date. An open question in the field is how the Pleckstrin Homology-Tec Homology (PHTH) domain inhibits BTK activity, with multiple competing models in the field. The authors used a complimentary set of biophysical techniques combined with well thought out stabilizing mutations to obtain structural insights into BTK regulation in its full length form. They were able to crystallize the full length construct of BTK but unfortunately the PHTH was not resolved yielding the structure similar to previously obtained in the field. The investigation of the same construct by SAXS yielded an elongated structural model, consistent with previous SAXS studies. Using cryo-EM the authors obtained a low resolution model for the FL BTK with a loosely connected density assigned to the dynamic PHTH around the compact SH2-SH3-Kinase Domain (KD) core. To gain further molecular insights into PHTH-KD interactions the authors followed a previously reported strategy and generated a fusion of PHTH-KD with a longer linker, yielding a crystal structure with a novel PHTH-KD interface which they tested in biochemical assays. Lastly, Yin-wei Lin et al crystallized the BTK KD in a novel partially active state in a "face to face" dimer with kinases exchanging the activation loops, although partially disordered, being theoretically perfectly positioned for trans phosphorylation. Overall this presents a valiant effort to gain molecular insights into what clearly is a dynamic regulatory motif on BTK and is a valuable addition to the field.

I think the authors addressed all the comments that I had during the initial round of review. The only thing I can think of that would strengthen the paper is to add a supplemental figure/table with the results of unbiased SITUS fitting rather than just saying that it is close to manual fitting. Additionally, SITUS outputs not just one best solution but all the top fits and having a significant difference in cross correlation between the best fit and second best fit is usually indicative of true fit. As the authors already ran SITUS and colores they have this data and I think having a sup table with cross correlations for the top 3 fits for each of their maps would make their EM fitting more convincing and not hard to do.

Lastly, it seems like both the authors and I agree that the cryoEM reconstructions do not correspond to the reported resolutions by the FSC. This point in no way changes any of the conclusions of the paper, however, I can't help but feel guilty that some student who is not in the field will look at these EM maps in the future and think that this is how 7A reconstructions should look like. If the authors, maybe somewhere in the methods could add a sentence indicating that the FSC curves may be overly optimistic and that there are no secondary structure features present which would be expected at these resolutions, that would be great.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In the manuscript "Articular cartilage corefucosylation regulates tissue resilience in osteoarthritis", the authors investigate the glycan structural changes in the context of pre-OA conditions. By mainly conducting animal experiments and glycomic analysis, this study clarified the molecular mechanism of N-glycan core fucosylation and Fut8 expression in the extracellular matrix resilience and unrecoverable cartilage degeneration. Lastly, a comprehensive glycan analysis of human OA cartilage verified the hypothesis.

Strengths:<br /> Generally, this manuscript is well structured with rigorous logic and clear language. This study is valuable and important in the early diagnosis of OA patients in the clinic, which is a great challenge nowadays.

Weaknesses:<br /> I recommend minor revisions:

1. I would suggest the authors prepare an illustrative scheme for the whole study, to explain the complex mechanism and also to summarize the results.

2. Including but not limited to Figures 2A-C, Figures 3A and C, Figure 4B, and Figures 5A and D. The texts in the above images are too small to read, I would suggest the authors remake these images.

3. The paper is generally readable, but the language could be polished a bit. Several writing errors should be realized during the careful check.

4. As several species and OA models were conducted in this study, it would be better if the authors could note the reason behind their choice for it.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Hornofova et al examined interactions between the nucleolus and promyelocytic leukemia nuclear bodies (PML-NBs) termed PML-nucleolar associations (PNAs). PNAs are found in a minor subset of cells, exist within distinct morphological subcategories, and are induced by cellular stressors including genotoxic damage. A systematic pharmacological investigation identified that compounds that inhibit RNA Polymerase 1 (RNAPI) and/or topoisomerase 1 or 2A caused the greatest proportion of cells with PNA. A specific RAD51 inhibitor (R02) impacted the number of cells exhibiting PNAs and PNA morphology. Genetic double-strand break (DSB) induction within the rDNA locus also induced PNA structures that were more prevalent when non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) was inhibited.

Strengths:<br /> PNA are morphologically distinct and readily visualized. The imaging data are high quality, and rDNA is amenable to studying nuclear dynamics. Specific induction of rDNA damage is a strong addition to the non-specific pharmacological damage characterized early in the manuscript. These data nicely demonstrate that rDNA double-strand breaks undermine PNA formation. Figure 1 is a comprehensive examination and presents a compelling argument that RNAPI and/or TOP1, TOP2A inhibition promote PNA structures.

Weaknesses:<br /> The data are limited to fixed fluorescent microscopy of structures present in a minority of cells. Data are occasionally qualitative and/or based upon interpretation of dynamic events extrapolated from fixed imaging. This study would benefit from live imaging that captures PNA dynamics.

Cell cycle and cell division are not considered. Double-strand break repair is cell cycle dependent, and most experiments occur over days of treatment and recovery. It is unclear if the cultures are proliferating, or which cell cycle phase the cells are in at the time of analysis. It is also unclear if PNAs are repeatedly dissociating and reforming each cell division.

The relationship of PNA morphologies (bowl, funnel, balloon, and PML-NDS) also remains unclear. It is possible that PNAs mature/progress through the distinct morphologies, and that morphological presentation is a readout of repair or damage in the rDNA locus. However, this is not formally addressed.

An I-Ppol targeted sequence within the rDNA locus suggests 3D structural rearrangement following damage. An orthogonal approach measuring rDNA 3D architecture would benefit comprehension. Following I-Ppol induction, it is possible that cells arrest in a G1 state. This may explain why targeting NHEJ has a greater impact on the number of 53BP1 foci and should be investigated.

Conclusions: PNAs are a phenomenon of biological significance and understanding that significance is of value. More work is required to advance knowledge in this area. The authors may wish to examine the literature on APBs (Alt-associated PML-NBs), which are similar structures where telomeres associate with PML-NBs in a specific subset of cancers. It is possible that APBs and PNAs share similar biology, and prior efforts on APBs may help guide future PNA studies.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors are interested in the relative importance of PRL versus GH and their interactive signaling in breast cancer. After examining GHR-PRLR interactions in response to ligands, they suggest that a reduction in cell surface GHR in response to PRL may be a mechanism whereby PRL can sometimes be protective against breast cancer.

Strengths:<br /> The strengths of the study include the interesting question being addressed and the application of multiple complementary techniques, including dSTORM, which is technically very challenging, especially when using double labeling. Thus, dSTORM is used to show co-clustering of GHR and PRLR, and, in response to PRL, rapid internalization of GHR and increased cell surface PRLR. Proximity ligation assays demonstrate that some GHR and PRLR are within 40 nm (≈ 4 plasma membranes) of each other and that upon ligand stimulation, they move apart. Intact receptor knockin and knockout approaches and receptor constructs without the Jak2 binding domain demonstrate a) a requirement for the PRLR for there to be PRL-driven internalization of GHR, and b) that Jak2-PRLR interactions are necessary for the stability of the GHR-PRLR colocalizations.

Weaknesses:<br /> The manuscript suffers from a lack of detail, which in places makes it difficult to evaluate the data and would make it very difficult for the results to be replicated by others. In addition, the manuscript would very much benefit from a full discussion of the limitations of the study. For example, the manuscript is written as if there is only one form of the PRLR while the anti-PRLR antibody used for dSTORM would also recognize the intermediate form and short forms 1a and 1b on the T47D cells. Given the very different roles of these other PRLR forms in breast cancer (Dufau, Vonderhaar, Clevenger, Walker and other labs), this limitation should at the very least be discussed. Similarly, the manuscript is written as if Jak2 essentially only signals through STAT5 but Jak2 is involved in multiple other signaling pathways from the multiple PRLRs, including the long form. Also, while there are papers suggesting that PRL can be protective in breast cancer, the majority of publications in this area find that PRL promotes breast cancer. How then would the authors interpret the effect of PRL on GHR in light of all those non-protective results?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Feng et al. test the hypothesis that human body size constrains the perception of object affordances, whereby only objects that are smaller than the body size will be perceived as useful and manipulable parts of the environment, whereas larger objects will be perceived as "less interesting components."

To test this idea, the study employs a multi-method approach consisting of three parts:

In the first part, human observers classify a set of 24 objects that vary systematically in size (e.g., ball, piano, airplane) based on 14 different affordances (e.g., sit, throw, grasp). Based on the average agreement of ratings across participants, the authors compute the similarity of affordance profiles between all object pairs. They report evidence for two homogenous object clusters that are separated based on their size with the boundary between clusters roughly coinciding with the average human body size. In follow-up experiments, the authors show that this boundary is larger/smaller in separate groups of participants who are instructed to imagine themselves as an elephant/cat.

In the second part, the authors ask different large language models (LLMs) to provide ratings for the same set of objects and affordances and conduct equivalent analyses on the obtained data. Some, but not all, of the models produce patterns of ratings that appear to show similar boundary effects, though less pronounced and at a different boundary size than in humans.

In the third part, the authors conduct an fMRI experiment. Human observers are presented with four different objects of different sizes and asked if these objects afford a small set of specific actions. Affordances are either congruent or incongruent with objects. Contrasting brain activity on incongruent trials against brain activity on congruent trials yields significant effects in regions within the ventral and dorsal visual stream, but only for small objects and not for large objects.

The authors interpret their findings as support for their hypothesis that human body size constrains object perception. They further conclude that this effect is cognitively penetrable, and only partly relies on sensorimotor interaction with the environment (and partly on linguistic abilities).

Strengths:<br /> The authors examine an interesting and relevant question and articulate a plausible (though somewhat underspecified) hypothesis that certainly seems worth testing. Providing more detailed insights into how object affordances shape perception would be highly desirable. Their method of analyzing similarity ratings between sets of objects seems useful and the multi-method approach is quite original and interesting.

Weaknesses:<br /> The study presents several shortcomings that clearly weaken the link between the obtained evidence and the drawn conclusions. Below I outline my concerns in no particular order:

1) Even after several readings, it is not entirely clear to me what the authors are proposing and to what extent the conducted work actually speaks to this. In the introduction, the authors write that they seek to test if body size serves not merely as a reference for object manipulation but also "plays a pivotal role in shaping the representation of objects." This motivation seems rather vague motivation and it is not clear to me how it could be falsified.<br /> Similarly, in the discussion, the authors write that large objects do not receive "proper affordance representation," and are "not the range of objects with which the animal is intrinsically inclined to interact, but probably considered a less interesting component of the environment." This statement seems similarly vague and completely beyond the collected data, which did not assess object discriminability or motivational values.<br /> Overall, the lack of theoretical precision makes it difficult to judge the appropriateness of the approaches and the persuasiveness of the obtained results. This is partly due to the fact that the authors do not spell out all of their theoretical assumptions in the introduction but insert new "speculations" to motivate the corresponding parts of the results section. I would strongly suggest clarifying the theoretical rationale and explaining in more detail how the chosen experiments allow them to test falsifiable predictions.

2) The authors used only a very small set of objects and affordances in their study and they do not describe in sufficient detail how these stimuli were selected. This renders the results rather exploratory and clearly limits their potential to discover general principles of human perception. Much larger sets of objects and affordances and explicit data-driven approaches for their selection would provide a far more convincing approach and allow the authors to rule out that their results are just a consequence of the selected set of objects and actions.

3) Relatedly, the authors could be more thorough in ruling out potential alternative explanations. Object size likely correlates with other variables that could shape human similarity judgments and the estimated boundary is quite broad (depending on the method, either between 80 and 150 cm or between 105 to 130 cm). More precise estimates of the boundary and more rigorous tests of alternative explanations would add a lot to strengthen the authors' interpretation.

4) Even though the division of the set of objects into two homogenous clusters appears defensible, based on visual inspection of the results, the authors should consider using more formal analysis to justify their interpretation of the data. A variety of metrics exist for cluster analysis (e.g., variation of information, silhouette values) and solutions are typically justified by convergent evidence across different metrics. I would recommend the authors consider using a more formal approach to their cluster definition using some of those metrics.

5) While I appreciate the manipulation of imagined body size, as a way to solidify the link between body size and affordance perception, I find it unfortunate that this is implemented in a between-subjects design, as this clearly leaves open the possibility of pre-existing differences between groups. I certainly disagree with the authors' statement that their findings suggest "a causal link between body size and affordance perception."

6) The use of LLMs in the current study is not clearly motivated and I find it hard to understand what exactly the authors are trying to test through their inclusion. As noted above, I think that the authors should discuss the putative roles of conceptual knowledge, language, and sensorimotor experience already in the introduction to avoid ambiguity about the derived predictions and the chosen methodology. As it currently stands, I find it hard to discern how the presence of perceptual boundaries in LLMs could constitute evidence for affordance-based perception.

7) Along the same lines, the fMRI study also provides very limited evidence to support the authors' claims. The use of congruency effects as a way of probing affordance perception is not well motivated. What exactly can we infer from the fact a region may be more active when an object is paired with an activity that the object doesn't afford? The claim that "only the affordances of objects within the range of body size were represented in the brain" certainly seems far beyond the data.

Importantly (related to my comments under 2) above), the very small set of objects and affordances in this experiment heavily complicates any conclusions about object size being the crucial variable determining the occurrence of congruency effects.

I would also suggest providing a more comprehensive illustration of the results (including the effects of CONGRUENCY, OBJECT SIZE, and their interaction at the whole-brain level).

Overall, I consider the main conclusions of the paper to be far beyond the reported data. Articulating a clearer theoretical framework with more specific hypotheses as well as conducting more principled analyses on more comprehensive data sets could help the authors obtain stronger tests of their ideas.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: This study investigated the role of mTORC1 and 2 in a mouse model of developmental epilepsy which simulates epilepsy in cortical malformations. Given activation of genes such as PTEN activates TORC1, and this is considered to be excessive in cortical malformations, the authors asked whether inactivating mTORC1 and 2 would ameliorate the seizures and malformation in the mouse model. The work is highly significant because a new mouse model is used where Raptor and Rictor, which regulate mTORC1 and 2 respectively, were inactivated in one hemisphere of the cortex. The work is also significant because the deletion of both Raptor and Rictor improved the epilepsy and malformation. In the mouse model, the seizures were generalized or there were spike-wave discharges (SWD). They also examined the interictal EEG. The malformation was manifested by increased cortical thickness and soma size.

Strengths: The presentation and writing are strong. The quality of data is strong. The data support the conclusions for the most part. The results are significant: Generalized seizures and SWDs were reduced when both Torc1 and 2 were inactivated but not when one was inactivated.

Weaknesses: One of the limitations is that it is not clear whether the area of cortex where Raptor or Rictor were affected was the same in each animal. Also, it is not clear which cortical cells were measured for soma size. Another limitation is that the hippocampus was affected as well as the cortex. One does not know the role of cortex vs. hippocampus. Any discussion about that would be good to add. It would also be useful to know if Raptor and Rictor are in glia, blood vessels, etc.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This manuscript analyzed resting state functional MRI metrics related to behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) for associations with patterns of neurotransmitter system receptor distribution, patterns of neurotransmitter-related gene expression, and profiles of performance on neuropsychological test battery items.

The overarching goal of the work was to assess whether these analyses point to selective vulnerability of some neurotransmitter systems in the symptomatology of bvFTD. The manuscript reports that reductions in fMRI measures of local brain functional activity in bvFTD followed the distribution of specific neurotransmitter systems. No similar findings were identified for MRI-based gray matter volume measurements.

Strengths of the manuscript include its leveraging of publicly available tools for large-scale regional brain mRNA profiles and neurotransmitter receptor distributions. An additional positive step for the literature involves further development of the concept that biomarkers of disruptions to specific functionally-connected networks may guide specific treatment strategies (as a corollary to this work, related to neurotransmitter system disruption) in neurodegenerative disease.

A weakness of the manuscript is that it is not able to directly address the main literature gap described in the Introduction -- namely, whether there is specific vulnerability of certain neuronal types versus other in bvFTD, or whether broader network/region-based neurodegeneration is the driver (and happens to include some selective neurotransmitter-related disruptions). In other words, if "A" is a biomarker of bvFTD, "A" has a partial correlation with "B", and the "AB" correlation has a partial correlation with "C", it seems too far a leap to conclude that "B" (in this case, profiles/distributions of neurotransmitter systems) is the central figure in the cascade.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The authors used optogenetic manipulations and electrophysiology recordings to study a causal role and the coding of superficial part of the mouse Superior Colliculus (SCs) during figure detection tasks. Authors previously reported that figure-ground perception relies on V1 activity (Kirchberger et al. 2021) and pointed out that silencing of V1 reduced the accuracy of the mice but still the performance was above the chance level. Therefore, visual information necessary in this task, could be processed via alternative pathways. In this study, authors investigated specifically SCs and used similar approach and analysis as in Kirchberger et al. 2021. Optogenetic silencing of the activity of visual neurons in SCs impaired the accuracy in all 3 versions of the figure detection task: contrast, orientation, and phase. Electrophysiology recordings revealed that SCs neurons are figure-ground modulated, but only by contrast- and orientation-based figures. They show SCs visually responsive neurons reflect behavioral performance in orientation-based figure task. The authors conclusion is that SCs is involved in figure detection task.

Overall, this study provides evidence that mouse SCs is involved in a figure detection task, and codes for task-related events. Authors heroically compared results between 3 different versions of the figure-based detection task. The logic of the study flows through the manuscript and authors prepared a detailed description of methods. However, my main concern is with 1) the amount of data used to make the key arguments, and 2) the interpretation of results. The key findings of this study (figure-ground modulations in SCs) could be a result of the visual cortical feedback in SCs during the task, or pupil diameter changes. Unfortunately, the authors did not rule out these possibilities.

Still, this study can be relevant to a general neuroscience audience, and results could be more convincing if the authors could clarify:

1) Optogenetic inactivation<br /> - The impact of laser stimulation on neural activity is not satisfactory (Supplementary Figure 1). The method seems to be insufficient to fully salience neurons. Electrophysiology control recordings of inactivation are performed in anesthetized mice, which is not a fair estimation of the effect in awake state. Therefore, it rises a major question how effective the inactivation is during the task?<br /> - Could authors provide more details if laser stimulation has an effect only on visual, or all sampled units? How many of units were recorded, and how many show positive and negative laser modulation? How local the inactivation effect is? Where was the silicon probe placed in relation to AAV expression and optical fiber position?

2) Number of sessions and units<br /> - The inactivation effect on behavior (Figure 1E) during phase-task has a significantly larger effect at 66ms after stimulus onset. How can authors explain this? Could this result be biased by one animal/session, or low number of trials for this condition? There is no information about number of trials, or sessions from individual animals. Adding a single example of animal's performance, and sessions for individual mice could clarify results in Figure 1.

- Figure 2H shows an example of neuron with an effect in the figure detection task based on phase difference, but Figure 2I/J (population response) shows there is no effect. Overall, the conclusion is that SCs neurons are not modulated by a phase-defined object. It seems that number of mice and hence units are smaller in phase-detection task comparing to two other tasks. How many of single units are modulated in each version of the task? How big is the FGM effect on single neuron response (could authors provide values in spikes/s)?

- One task is dropped from analysis which it is one of the main points of the paper: to compare responses across different versions of the figure detection task in SCs. But Figures 3-5 only focuses on two tasks, because there is not enough of data for figure-based contrast task.

3) Figure-ground modulation in SCs<br /> - How is neural activity correlated with pupil size, movement (eg. whisking, or face), or jaw movement (preparation to lick)? Can activity of FGM neurons in SCs be explained by these behavioral variables?<br /> - Could authors describe in more detail how they measure a pupil position and diameter, by showing raw data, pupil size aligned to task events?<br /> - How does pupil diameter change between tasks? Small pupil changes can affect responses of visual neurons, and this could be an explanation of FGM effect in SCs. Can authors rule out this possibility, by for example showing pupil size and changes in position at stimulus onset in different tasks?<br /> - Authors in discussion mentioned that the modulation of V1 could be transferred to SCs through the direct projection. Moreover, animals perform above chance in both inactivation experiments (V1 and SC), which could be also an effect of geniculate projections to HVAs (eg. Sincich et al. 2004). Could authors discuss different possibilities?

4) Interpretation of multisensory neurons is not clear. In Figure 5B, there is an example of neuron with two peaks of response. Authors speculate about the activity (pre-motor) but there is lack of clear measurement showing "multisensory" response of these neurons. Could these responses be related to the movement of the lick spout towards the mouth of the mouse (500 ms after the presentation of the stimulus)? Moreover, the number of "multisensory" units is very low (5 units, and 8 units).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors set out to characterize the anatomical connectivity profile and the functional responses of chandelier cells (ChCs) in the mouse primary visual cortex. Using retrograde rabies tracing, optogenetics, and in vitro electrophysiology, they found that the primary source of input to ChCs are local layer 5 pyramidal cells, as well as long-range thalamic and cortical connections. ChCs provided input to local layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons, but did not receive reciprocal connections.

With two-photon calcium imaging recordings during passive viewing of drifting gratings, the authors showed that ChCs exhibit weakly selective visual responses, high correlations within their own population, and strong responses during periods of arousal (assessed by locomotion and pupil size). These results were replicated and extended in experiments with natural images and prediction of receptive field structure using a convolutional neural network.

Furthermore, the authors employed a learned visuomotor task in a virtual corridor to show that ChCs exhibit strong responses to mismatches between visual flow and locomotion, locomotion-related activation (similar to what was shown above), and visually-evoked suppression. They also showed the existence of two clusters of pyramidal neurons with functionally different responses - a cluster with "classically visual" responses and a cluster with locomotion- and mismatch-driven responses (the latter more correlated with ChCs). Comparing naive and trained mice, the authors found that visual responses of ChCs are suppressed following task learning, accompanied by a shortening of the axon initial segment (AIS) of pyramidal cells and an increase in the proportion of AIS contacted by ChCs. However, additional controls would be required to identify which component(s) of the experimental paradigm led to the functional and anatomical changes observed.

Finally, using a chemogenetic inactivation of ChCs, the authors propose weak connectivity to pyramidal cells (due to small effects in pyramidal cell activity). However, these results are not unequivocally supported, as the baseline activity of ChCs before inactivation is considerably lower, suggesting a potentially confounding homeostatic plasticity mechanism might already be operating.

Strengths:<br /> The authors bring a comprehensive, state-of-the-art methodology to bear, including rabies tracing, in vivo two-photon calcium imaging, in vitro electrophysiology, optogenetics and chemogenetics, and deep neural networks. Their analyses and statistical tests are sound and for the most part, support their claims. Their results are in line with previous findings and extend them to the primary visual cortex.

Weaknesses:<br /> - Some of the results (e.g. arousal-related responses) are not entirely surprising given that similar results exist in other cortical areas.

- Control analyses regarding locomotion patterns before and after learning the task (Figure 5), and additional control experiments to identify whether functional and anatomical changes following task learning were due to learning, repeated visual exposure, exposure to reward, or visuomotor experience would strengthen the claims made.

- The strength of the results of the chemogenetics experiment is impacted by the lower baseline activity of ChCs that express the KORD receptor. At present, it is not possible to exclude the presence of homeostatic plasticity in the network *before* the inactivation takes place.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The study conducted by Ouasti et al. is an elegant investigation of fission yeast CAF-1, employing a diverse array of technologies to dissect its functions and their interdependence. These functions play a critical role in specifying interactions vital for DNA replication, heterochromatin maintenance, and DNA damage repair, and their dynamics involve multiple interactions. The authors have extensively utilized various in vitro and in vivo tools to validate their model and emphasize the dynamic nature of this complex.

Strengths:<br /> Their work is supported by robust experimental data from multiple techniques, including NMR and SAXS, which validate their molecular model. They conducted in vitro interactions using EMSA and isothermal microcalorimetry, in vitro histone deposition using Xenopus high-speed egg extract, and systematically generated and tested various genetic mutants for functionality in in vivo assays. They successfully delineated domain-specific functions using in vitro assays and could validate their roles to large extent using genetic mutants. One significant revelation from this study is the unfolded nature of the acidic domain, observed to fold when binding to histones. Additionally, the authors also elucidated the role of the long KER helix in mediating DNA binding and enhancing the association of CAF-1 with PCNA. The paper effectively addresses its primary objective and is strong.

Weaknesses:<br /> A few relatively minor unresolved aspects persist, which, if clarified or experimentally addressed by the authors, could further bolster the study.

1. The precise function of the WHD domain remains elusive. Its deletion does not result in DNA damage accumulation or defects in heterochromatin maintenance. This raises questions about the biological significance of this domain and whether it is dispensable. While in vitro assays revealed defects in chromatin assembly using this mutant (Figure 5), confirming these phenotypes through in vivo assays would provide additional assurance that the lack of function is not simply due to the in vitro system lacking PTMs or other regulatory factors.

2. The observation of increased Pcf2-gfp foci in pcf1-ED* cells, particularly in mono-nucleated (G2-phase) and bi-nucleated cells with septum marks (S-phase), might suggest the presence of replication stress. This could imply incomplete replication in specific regions, leading to the persistence of Caf1-ED*-PCNA factories throughout the cell cycle. To further confirm this, detecting accumulated single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) regions outside of S-phase using RPA as an ssDNA marker could be informative.

3. Moreover, considering the authors' strong assertion of histone binding defects in ED* through in vitro assays (Figure 2d and S2a), these claims could be further substantiated, especially considering that some degree of histone deposition might still persist in vivo in the ED* mutant (Figure 7d, viable though growth defective double ED*+hip1D mutants). For example, the approach, akin to the one employed in Fig. 6a (FLAG-IPs of various Pcf1-FLAG-tagged mutants), could also enable a comparison of the association of different mutants with histones and PCNA, providing a more thorough validation of their findings.

4. It would be valuable for the authors to speculate on the necessity of having disordered regions in CAF1. Specifically, exploring the overall distribution of these domains within disordered/unfolded structures could provide insightful perspectives. Additionally, it's intriguing to note that the significant disparities observed among mutants (ED*, PIP*, and KER*) in in vitro assays seem to become more generic in vivo, except for the indispensability of the WHD-domain. Could these disordered regions potentially play a crucial role in the phase separation of replication factories? Considering these questions could offer valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms at play.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Light energy drives photosynthesis. However, excessive light can damage (i.e., photo-damage) and thus inactivate the photosynthetic process. A major target site of photo-damage is photosystem II (PSII). In particular, one component of PSII, the reaction center protein, D1, is very suspectable to photo-damage, however, this protein is maintained efficiently by an elaborate multi-step PSII-D1 turnover/repair cycle. Two proteases, FtsH and Deg, are known to contribute to this process, respectively, by efficient degradation of photo-damaged D1 protein processively and endoproteolytically. In this manuscript, Kato et al., propose an additional step (an early step) in the D1 degradation/repair pathway. They propose that "Tryptophan oxidation" at the N-terminus of D1 may be one of the key oxidations in the PSII repair, leading to processive degradation of D1 by FtsH. Both, their data and arguments are very compelling.

The D1 protein repair/degradation pathway in its simplest form can be defined essentially by five steps: (1) migration of damaged PSII core complex to the stroma thylakoid, (2) partial PSII disassembly of the PSII core monomer, (3) access of protease degrading damaged D1, (4) concomitant D1 synthesis, and (5) reassembly of PSII into grana thylakoid. An enormous amount of work has already been done to define and characterize these various steps. Kato et al., in this manuscript, are proposing a very early yet novel critical step in D1 protein turnover in which Tryptophan(Trp) oxidation in PSII core proteins influences D1 degradation mediated by FtsH.

Using a variety of approaches, such as mass-spectrometry (Table 1), site-directed mutagenesis (Figures 2-4), D1 degradation assays (Figures 3, and 4), and simulation modeling (Figure 5), Kato et al., provide both strong evidence and reasonable arguments that an N-terminal Trp oxidation may be likely to be a 'key' oxidative post-translational modification (OPTM) that is involved in triggering D1 degradation and thus activating the PSII repair pathway. Consequently, from their accumulated data, the authors propose a scenario in which the unraveling of the N-terminal of the D1 protein facilitated by Trp oxidation plays a critical 'recognition' role in alerting the plant that the D1 protein is photo-damaged and thus to kick start the processive degradation pathway initiated possibly by FtsH. Coincidently, Forsman and Eaton-Rye (Biochemistry 2021, 60, 1, 53-63), while working with the thermophilic cyanobacterium, Thermosynechococcus vulcanus, showed that when the N-terminal DE-loop of the D1 protein is photo-damaged a disruption of the interaction between the PsbT subunit and D1 occurs which may serve as a signal for PSII to undergo repair following photodamage. While the activation of the processive degradation pathways in Chlamydomonas versus Thermosynechococcus vulcanus have significant mechanistic differences, it's interesting to note and speculate that the stability of the N-terminal of their respective D1 proteins seems to play a critical role in 'signaling' the PSII repair system to be activated and initiate repair. But it's complicated. For instance, significant Trp oxidation also occurs on the lumen side of other PSII subunits which may also play a significant role in activating the repair processes as well. Indeed, Kato et al.,( Photosynthesis Research volume 126, pages 409-416 (2015)) proposed a two-step model whereby the primary event is disruption of a Mn-cluster in PSII on the lumen side. A secondary event is damage to D1 caused by energy that is absorbed by chlorophyll. But models adapt, change, and get updated. And the data provided by Kato et al., in this manuscript, gives us a unique glimpse/snapshot into the importance of the stability of the N-terminal during photo-damage and its role in D1-turnover. For instance, the author's use site-directed mutagenesis of Trp residues undergoing OPTM in the D1 protein coupled with their D1 degradation assays (Figure 3 and 4), provides evidence that Trp oxidation (in particular the oxidation of Trp14) in coordination with FtsH results in the degradation of D1 protein. Indeed, their D1 degradation assays coupled with the use of a ftsh mutant provide further significant support that Trp14 oxidation and FtsH activity are strongly linked. But for FstH to degrade D1 protein it needs to gain access to photo-damaged D1. FtsH access to D1 is achieved by having CP43 partially dissociate from the PSII complex. Hence, the authors also addressed the possibility that Trp oxidation may also play a role in CP43 disassembly from the PSII complex thereby giving FtsH access to D1. Using a site-directed mutagenesis approach, they showed that Trp oxidation in CP43 appeared to have little impact on the PSII repair (Supplemental Figure S6). This result shows that D1-Trp14 oxidation appears to be playing a role in D1 turnover that occurs after CP43 disassembly from the PSII complex. Alternatively, the authors cannot exclude the possibility that D1-Trp14 oxidation in some way facilitates CP43 dissociation. Further investigation is needed on this point. However, D1-Trp14 oxidation is causing an internal disruption of the D1 protein possibly at the N-terminus of the protein. Consequently, the role of Trp14 oxidation in disrupting the stability of the N-terminal domain of the D1 protein was analyzed computationally. Using a molecular dynamics approach (Figure 5), the authors attempted to create a mechanistic model to explain why when D1 protein Trp14 undergoes oxidation the N-terminal domain of D1protein becomes unraveled. Specifically, the authors propose that the interaction between D1 protein Trp14 with PsbI Ser25 becomes disrupted upon oxidation of Trp14. Consequently, the authors concluded from their molecular dynamics simulation analysis that " the increased fluctuation of the first α-helix of D1 would give a chance to recognize the photo-damaged D1 by FtsH protease". Hence, the author's experimental and computational approaches employed here develop a compelling early-stage repair model that integrates 1) Trp14 oxidation, 2) FtsH activation and 3) D1- turnover being initiated at its N-terminal domain. However, a word of caution should be emphasized here. This model is just a snapshot of the very early stages of the D1 protein turnover process. The data presented here gives us just a small glimpse into the unique relationship between Trp oxidation of the D1 protein which may trigger significant N-terminal structural changes of the D1 protein that both signals and provides an opportunity for FstH to begin protease digestion of the D1 protein. However, the authors go to great lengths in their discussion section to not overstate solely the role of Trp14 oxidation in the complicated process of D1 turnover. The authors certainly recognize that there are a lot of moving parts involved in D1 turnover. And while Trp14 oxidation is the major focus of this paper, the authors show in Supplemental Fig S4 the structural positions of various additional oxidized Trp residues in the Thermosynecoccocus vulcans PSII core proteins. Indeed, this figure shows that the majority of oxidized Trps are located on the luminal side of PSII complex clustered around the oxygen-evolving complex. So, while oxidized Trp14 may be involved in the early stages of D1 turnover certainly oxidized Trps on the lumen side are also more than likely playing a role in D1 turnover as well. To untangle this complex process will require additional research.

Nevertheless, identifying and characterizing the role of oxidative modification of tryptophan (Trp) residues, in particular, Trp14, in the PSII core provides another critical step in an already intricate multi-step process of D1 protein turnover during photo-damage.

This suggests to me that there is a lot of proprietary layer 2-3 in IOT. Is this the case?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript examines an important question, namely how the brain associates events spaced in time. It uses a variety of neural methods including fiber photometry as well as area-specific and pathway-silencing methods with the exquisite dissociation of norepinephrine and dopamine. The data show that neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC) respond to auditory cue onset, offset, and shock. These responses are stronger if the cue is paired with shock in a trace procedure. Optogenetic stimulation similar to the neural response captured by fiber photometry enhances associative learning. LC terminals in the dorsal hippocampus also showed phasic responses during fear conditioning and drove dopamine and norepinephrine responses. Pharmacological methods revealed that dopamine and not norepinephrine is critical for fear learning.

Strengths:<br /> The examination of the neural signal to different tone intensities, different shock intensities, repeated tone presentation (habituation), and conditioning, offers an unprecedented account of the neural signal to non-associative and associative processes. This kind of deconstruction of the elements of conditioning offers a strong account of how the brain processes the stimuli used and their interaction during learning.

Excellent use of data acquired with fiber photometry in the optogenetic interrogation study.

The use of pharmacology to disentangle dopamine and norepinephrine was excellent.

Weaknesses:<br /> While the optogenetic study was lovely, a control using the same stimulation but delivered at different time points would have been a good addition to show how critical the neural signal at tone onset, tone offset, and shock is.

Justification for the focus on D1 receptors was lacking.

The manuscript provides convincing evidence that the neural signal is not an error-correcting one by including a predicted (by a tone) and unpredicted shock. One possibility is that perhaps the unpredicted shock could be predicted by the context. Some clarification on the behavioural procedures would help understand if indeed the unsignaled shock could be predicted by the context or not.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This manuscript is a follow-up to a recent study of synaptic development based on a powerful data set that combines anterograde labeling, immunofluorescence labeling of synaptic proteins, and STORM imaging (Cell Reports 2023). Specifically, they use anti-Vglut2 label to determine the size of the presynaptic structure (which they describe as the vesicle pool size), anti-Bassoon to label a number of active zones, and anti-Homer to identify postsynaptic densities. In their previous study, they compared the detailed synaptic structure across the development of synapses made with contra-projecting vs ipsi-projecting RGCs and compared this developmental profile with a mouse model with reduced retinal waves. In this study, they produce a new analysis on the same data set in which they classify synapses into "complex" vs. "simple" and assess the number and spacing of these synapses. From these measurements, they make conclusions regarding the processes that lead to synapse competition/stabilization.

Strengths:<br /> This is a fantastic data set for describing the structural details of synapse development in a part of the brain undergoing activity-dependent synaptic rearrangements. The fact that they can differentiate eye of origin is also a plus.

Weaknesses:<br /> The lack of details provided for the classification scheme as well as the interpretation of small effect sizes limit the interpretations that can be made based on these findings.

1. The criteria to classify synapses as simple vs. complex is critical for all of the analysis in this study. Therefore this criteria for classification should be much more explicit and tested for robustness. As stated in the methods, it is based on the number of active zones which are designated by the number of Bassoon clusters associated with a Vglut2 cluster (line 697). A second part of the criteria is the size of the presynaptic terminal as assayed by "greater Vglut2 signal" (line 116). So how are these thresholds determined? For Bassoon clusters, is one voxel sufficient? Two? If it's one, how often do they see a Bassoon positive voxel with no Vglut2 cluster and therefore may represent "noise"? There is no distribution of Bassoon volumes that is provided that might be the basis for selecting this number of sites. Unfortunately, the images are not helpful. For example, does P8 WT in Figure 1B have 7 or 2? According to Figure 2C, it appears the numbers are closer to 2-4.

The Vglut volume measurements also do not seem to provide a clear criterion. Figure 2 shows that the distributions of Vglut2 cluster volumes for complex and for simple synapses are significantly overlapping.

The authors need to clarify the quantitative approach used for this classification strategy and test how sensitive the results of the study are to how robust this strategy is

2. Effect sizes are quite small and all comparisons are made on medians of distributions. This leads to an n=3 biological replicates for all comparisons. Hence this small n may lead to significant results based on ANOVAS/t-tests, but the statistical power of these effects is quite weak. To accurately represent the variance in their data, the authors should show all three data points for each category (with a SD error bar when possible). They should also include the number of synapses in each category (e.g. the numerators in Figure 1D and the denominators for Figure 1E). For other figures, there are additional statistical questions described below.

3. The authors need to add a caveat regarding their classification of synapses as "complex" vs. "simple" since this is a terminology that already exists in the field and it is not clear that these STORM images are measuring the same thing. For example, in EM studies, "complex" refers to multiple RGCs converging on the same single postsynaptic site. The authors here acknowledge that they cannot assign different AZs to different RGCs so this comparison is an assumption. In Figure 2 they argue this is a good assumption based on the finding that the Vglut column/active zone is constant and therefore each represents a single RGC. However, the authors should acknowledge that they are actually seeing quite different percentages than those in EM studies. For example, in Monavarfeshani et al, eLife 2018, there were no complex synapses found at P8. (Note this study also found many more complex vs. simple synapses in the adult - 70% vs. the 20% found in the current study - but this difference could be a developmental effect). In the future, the authors may want to take another data set in the adult dLGN to make a direct comparison based on numbers and see if their classification method for complex/simple maps onto the one that currently exists in the literature.

4. Figure 3 assays the relative distribution of simple vs. complex synapses. They found that a larger percentage of simple synapses were within 1.5 microns of complex synapses than you would expect by chance for both ipsi and contra projecting RGCs, and hence conclude that complex synapses are sites of synaptic clustering. In contrast, there was no clustering of ipsi-simple to contra-complex synapses and vice versa. The authors also argue that this clustering decreases between P4 and P8 for ipsi projecting RGCs.

This analysis needs much more rigor before any conclusions can be drawn. First, the authors need to justify the 1.5-micron criteria for clustering and how robust their results are to variations in this distance. Second, these age effects need to be tested for statistical significance with an ANOVA (all the stats presented are pairwise comparisons to means expected by random distributions at each age). Finally, the authors should consider what n's to use here - is it still grouped by biological replicate? Why not use individual synapses across mice? If they do biological replicates, then they should again show error bars for each data point in their biological replicates. And they should include the number of synapses that went into these measurements in the caption.

5. Line 211-212 - the authors conclude that the absence of clustered ipsi-simple synapses indicates a failure to stabilize (Figure 3). Yet, the link between this measurement and synapse stabilization is not clear. In particular, the conclusion that "isolated" synapses are the ones that will be eliminated seems to be countered by their finding in Figure 3D/E which shows that there is no difference in vesicle pool volume between near and far synapses. If isolated synapses are indeed the ones that fail to stabilize by P8, wouldn't you expect them to be weaker/have fewer vesicles? Also, it's hard to tell if there is an age-dependent effect since the data presented in Figures 3D/E are merged across ages.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The systematic way in which path selection is parametrically investigated is the main contribution.

Strengths:<br /> The authors have developed an impressive workflow to study gait and gaze in natural terrain.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The training and validation data of the CNN are not explained fully making it unclear if the data tells us anything about the visual features used to guide steering.

It is not clear how or on what data the network was trained (training vs. validation vs. un-peeked test data), and justification of the choices made. There is no discussion of possible overfitting. The network could be learning just e.g. specific rock arrangements. If the network is overfitting the "features" it uses could be very artefactual, pixel-level patterns and not the kinds of "features" the human reader immediately has in mind.

2. The use of descriptive terminology should be made systematic.

Specifically, the following terms are used without giving a single, clear definition for them: path, step, step location, foot plant, foothold, future foothold, foot location, future foot location, foot position.

I think some terms are being used interchangeably. I would really highly recommend a diagrammatic cartoon sketch, showing the definitions of all these terms in a single figure, and then sticking to them in the main text.

3. More coverage of different interpretations / less interpretation in the abstract/introduction would be prudent

The authors discuss the path selection very much on the basis of energetic costs and gait stability. At least mention should be given to other plausible parameters the participants might be optimizing (or that indeed they may be just satisficing).

That is, it is taken as "given" that energetic cost is the major driver of path selection in your task, and that the relevant perception relies on internal models. Neither of these is a priori obvious nor is it as far as I can tell shown by the data (optimizing other variables, satisficing behavior, or online "direct perception" cannot be ruled out).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, the authors investigated the effects of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) during sleep on memory retention for artificial words with varying levels of phonotactical similarity to real words. The authors report that the high phonotactic probability (PP) words showed a more pronounced EEG alpha decrease during encoding and were more easily learned than the low PP words. Following TMR during sleep, participants who had been cued with the high PP TMR, remembered those words better than 0, whilst no such difference was found in the other conditions. Accordingly, the authors report higher EEG spindle band power during slow-wave up-states for the high PP as compared to low PP TMR trials. Overall, the authors conclude that artificial words that are easier to learn, benefit more from TMR than those which are difficult to learn.

Strengths:<br /> 1. The authors have carefully designed the artificial stimuli to investigate the effectiveness of TMR on words that are easy to learn and difficult to learn due to their levels of similarity with prior word-sound knowledge. Their approach of varying the level of phonotactic probability enables them to have better control over phonotactical familiarity than in a natural language and are thus able to disentangle which properties of word learning contribute to TMR success.

2. The use of EEG during wakeful encoding and sleep TMR sheds new light on the neural correlates of high PP vs. low PP both during wakeful encoding and cue-induced retrieval during sleep.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The present analyses are based on a small sample and comparisons between participants. Considering that the TMR benefits are based on changes in memory categorization between participants, it could be argued that the individuals in the high PP group were more susceptible to TMR than those in the low PP group for reasons other than the phonotactic probabilities of the stimuli (e.g., these individuals might be more attentive to sounds in the environment during sleep). While the authors acknowledge the small sample size and between-subjects comparison as a limitation, a discussion of an alternative interpretation of the data is missing.

2. While the one-tailed comparison between the high PP condition and 0 is significant, the ANOVA comparing the four conditions (between subjects: cued/non-cued, within-subjects: high/low PP) does not show a significant effect. With a non-significant interaction, I would consider it statistically inappropriate to conduct post-hoc tests comparing the conditions against each other. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the p-values reported for the t-tests have been corrected for multiple comparisons. Thus, these findings should be interpreted with caution.

3. With the assumption that the artificial words in the study have different levels of phonotactic similarity to prior word-sound knowledge, it was surprising to find that the phonotactic probabilities were calculated based on an American English lexicon whilst the participants were German speakers. While it may be the case that the between-language lexicons overlap, it would be reassuring to see some evidence of this, as the level of phonotactic probability is a key manipulation in the study.

4. Another manipulation in the study is that participants learn whether the words are linked to a monetary reward or not, however, the rationale for this manipulation is unclear. For instance, it is unclear whether the authors expect the reward to interact with the TMR effects.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The present study presents a comprehensive exploration of the distinct impacts of Isoflurane and Ketamine on c-Fos expression throughout the brain. To understand the varying responses across individual brain regions to each anesthetic, the researchers employ principal component analysis (PCA) and c-Fos-based functional network analysis. The methodology employed in this research is both methodical and expansive. Notably, the utilization of a custom software package to align and analyze brain images for c-Fos positive cells stands out as an impressive addition to their approach. This innovative technique enables effective quantification of neural activity and enhances our understanding of how anesthetic drugs influence brain networks as a whole.

The primary novelty of this paper lies in the comparative analysis of two anesthetics, Ketamine and Isoflurane, and their respective impacts on brain-wide c-Fos expression. The study reveals the distinct pathways through which these anesthetics induce loss of consciousness. Ketamine primarily influences the cerebral cortex, while Isoflurane targets subcortical brain regions. This finding highlights the differing mechanisms of action employed by these two anesthetics-a top-down approach for Ketamine and a bottom-up mechanism for Isoflurane. Furthermore, this study uncovers commonly activated brain regions under both anesthetics, advancing our knowledge about the mechanisms underlying general anesthesia.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The study offers a compelling molecular model for the organization of rootlets, a critical organelle that links cilia to the basal body. Striations have been observed in rootlets, but their assembly, composition, and function remain unknown. While previous research has explored rootlet structure and organization, this study delivers an unprecedented level of resolution, valuable to the centrosome and cilia field. The authors isolated rootlets from mice's eyes. They apply EM to partially purified rootlets (first negative stain, then cryoET). From these micrographs, they observed striations along the membranes along the rootlet but no regular spacing was observed.

The thickness of the sample and membranes prevented good contrast in the tomograms. Thus they further purified the rootlets using detergent, which allowed them to obtain cryoET micrographs of the rootlets with greater details. The tomograms were segmented and further processed to improve the features of the rootlet structures. From their analysis, they described 3 regular cross-striations and amorphous densities, which are connected perpendicularly to filaments along the length of the rootlets. They propose that various proteins provide the striations and rootletin forms parallel coiled coils that run along the rootlet. Overall their data provide a detailed model for the molecular organization of the rootlet.

The major strength is that this high-quality study uses state-of-the-art cryo-electron tomography, sub-tomogram averaging, and image analysis to provide a model of the molecular organization of rootlets. The micrographs are exceptional, with excellent contrast and details, which also implies the sample preparation was well optimized to provide excellent samples for cryo-ET. The manuscript is also clear and accessible.

To further validate their model, it would have been useful to identify some components in the EM maps through complementary approaches (mass spectrometry, mutants disrupting certain features, CLEM). Some potential candidates are mentioned in the discussion.

This research marks a significant step forward in our understanding of rootlets' molecular organization.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript by Leanza and colleagues explores the regulation of Wnt signaling and its association with advanced glycation end products (AGEs) accumulation in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes (T2D). The paper provides valuable insights into the potential mechanisms underlying bone fragility in individuals with T2D. Overall, the manuscript is well-structured, and the methodology is sound. I would suggest some minor revisions to improve clarity.

Strengths:<br /> The study addresses an important and clinically relevant question concerning the mechanisms underlying bone fragility in postmenopausal women with T2D.

The study's methodology appears sound, and the inclusion of postmenopausal women with and without T2D undergoing hip arthroplasty adds to the clinical relevance of the findings. Additionally, measuring gene expression and AGEs in bone samples provides direct insights into the study's objectives.

The manuscript presents data clearly, and the results are well-organized.

Weaknesses:<br /> Title. The title could be more specific to better reflect the content of the study. Also, the abstract should concisely summarize the study's main findings, providing some figures.

Introduction: the introduction would benefit from the addition of a clearer, more focused statement of the research questions or hypotheses guiding this study.

Methods: more information is needed on the hystomorphometry analysis. Surgical samples from 8 T2D and 9 non-diabetic subjects were used for histomorphometry analysis. How did these subjects compare with the other subjects in the T2D and control groups? Were they representative? How were they selected?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript introduces a new computational framework for choosing 'the best method' according to the case for getting the best possible structural prediction for the CDR-H3 loop. The authors show their strategy improves on average the accuracy of the predictions on datasets of increasing difficulty in comparison to several state-of-the-art methods. They also show the benefits of improving the structural predictions of the CDR-H3 in the evaluation of different properties that may be relevant for drug discovery and therapeutic design.

Strengths:<br /> The authors introduce a novel framework, which can be easily adapted and improved. The authors use a well-defined dataset to test their new method. A modest average accuracy gain is obtained in comparison to other state-of-the art methods for the same task while avoiding testing different prediction approaches.

Weaknesses:<br /> The accuracy gain is mainly ascribed to easy cases, while the accuracy and precision for moderate to challenging cases are comparable to other PLM methods (see Fig. 4b and Extended Data Fig. 2). That raises the question: how likely is it to be in a moderate or challenging scenario? For example, it is not clear whether the comparison to the solved X-ray structures of anti-VEGF nanobodies represents an easy or challenging case for H3-OPT. The mutant nanobodies seem not to provide any further validation as the single mutations are very far away from the CDR-H3 loop and they do not disrupt the structure in any way. Indeed, RMSD values follow the same trend in H3-OPT and IgFold predictions (Fig. 4c). A more challenging test and interesting application could be solving the structure of a designed or mutated CDR-H3 loop.

The proposed method lacks a confidence score or a warning to help guide the users in moderate to challenging cases.

The fact that AF2 outperforms H3-OPT in some particular cases (e.g. Fig. 2c and Extended Data Fig. 3) raises the question: is there still room for improvements? It is not clear how sensible is H3-OPT to the defined parameters. In the same line, bench-marking against other available prediction algorithms, such as OmegaFold, could shed light on the actual accuracy limit.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The authors tried to study the role of the cylicin gene in sperm formation and male fertility. They used the Crispr/cas 9 to knockout two mouse cylicin genes, cylicin 1 and cylicin 2. They used comprehensive methods to phenotype the mouse models and discovered that the two genes, particularly cylicin 2 are essential for sperm calyx formation. They further compared the evolution of the two genes. Finally, they identified mutations of the genes in a patient. The major strengths are the high quality of data presented, and the conclusion is supported by their findings from the animal models and patients. The major weakness is that the study is rather descriptive without molecular mechanism studies, limiting its impact on the field.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Combining several MD simulation techniques (NMR-constrained replica-exchange metadynamics, Markov State Model, and unbiased MD) the authors identified the aC-beta4 loop of PKA kinase as a switch crucially involved in PKA nucleotide/substrate binding cooperatively. They identified a previously unreported excited conformational state of PKA (ES2), this switch controls and characterized ES2 energetics with respect to the ground state. Based on translating the simulations into chemical shits and NMR characterizing of PKA WT and an aC-beta4 mutant, the author made a convincing case in arguing that the simulation-suggested excited state is indeed an excited state observed by NMR, thus giving the excited state conformational details.

Strengths:<br /> This work incorporates extensive simulation works, new NMR data, and in vitro biochemical analysis. It stands out in its comprehensiveness, and I think it made a great case.

Weaknesses:<br /> The manuscript is somewhat difficult to read even for kinase experts, and even harder for the layman. The difficulty partially arises from mixing technical description of the simulations with structural interpretation of the results, which is more intuitive, and partially arises from the assumption that readers are familiar with kinase architecture and its key elements (the aC helix, the APE motif etc).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, the authors set out to address the question of how the SNARE protein Syntaxin 17 senses autophagosome maturation by being recruited to autophagosomal membranes only once autophagosome formation and sealing is complete. The authors discover that the C-terminal region of Syntaxin 17 is essential for its sensing mechanism that involves two transmembrane domains and a positively charged region. The authors discover that the lipid PI4P is highly enriched in mature autophagosomes and that electrostatic interaction with Syntaxin 17's positively charged region with PI4P drives recruitment specifically to mature autophagosomes. The temporal basis for PI4P enrichment and Syntaxin 17 recruitment to ensure that unsealed autophagosomes do not fuse with lysosomes is a very interesting and important discovery. Overall, the data are clear and convincing, with the study providing important mechanistic insights that will be of broad interest to the autophagy field, and also to cell biologists interested in phosphoinositide lipid biology. The author's discovery also provides an opportunity for future research in which Syntaxin 17's c-terminal region could be used to target factors of interest to mature autophagosomes.

Strengths:<br /> The study combines clear and convincing cell biology data with in vitro approaches to show how Syntaxin 17 is recruited to mature autophagosomes. The authors take a methodical approach to narrow down the critical regions within Syntaxin 17 required for recruitment and use a variety of biosensors to show that PI4P is enriched on mature autophagosomes.

Weaknesses:<br /> There are no major weaknesses, overall the work is highly convincing. It would have been beneficial if the authors could have shown whether altering PI4P levels would affect Syntaxin 17 recruitment. However, this is understandably a challenging experiment to undertake and the authors outlined their various attempts to tackle this question. In addition, clear statements within the figure legends on the number of independent experimental repeats that were conducted for experiments that were quantitated are not currently present in the manuscript.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The work in this manuscript builds on prior efforts by this team to understand how sterols are biosynthesized and utilized in bacteria. The study reports a new function for three genes encoded near sterol biosynthesis enzymes, suggesting the resulting proteins function as a sterol transport system. Biochemical and structural characterization of the two soluble components of the pathway establishes that both proteins can bind sterols, with a preference for 4-methylated derivatives. High-resolution x-ray structures of the apoproteins reveal hydrophobic cavities of the appropriate size to accommodate these substrates. Docking and molecular dynamics simulations confirm this observation and provide specific insights into residues involved in substrate binding.

Strengths:<br /> The manuscript is comprehensive and well-written. The annotation of a new function in a set of proteins related to bacterial sterol usage is exciting and likely to enable further study of this phenomenon - which is currently not well understood. The work also has implications for improving our understanding of lipid usage in general among bacterial organisms.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors might consider moving some of the bioinformatics figures to the main text, given how much space is devoted to this topic in the results section.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS) is associated with obesity and is caused by deletion or mutations in one cope of the Rai1 gene which encodes a transcriptional regulator. Previous studies have shown that Bdnf gene expression is reduced in the hypothalamus of Rai1 heterozygous mice. This manuscript by Javed et al. further links SMS-associated obesity with reduced Bdnf gene expression in the PVH by providing three lines of evidence. First, the authors conducted proteomic analysis of hypothalamic extracts from WT and SMS (Rai1 +/-) mice and showed that several signaling cascades downstream of BDNF (e.g., PI3K-AKT and mTOR) were down regulated in SMS mice. Second, the authors found that deletion of both copies of the Rai1 gene in all BDNF-expressing cells or BDNF-expressing neurons in the PVH led to obesity, although the phenotype is more subtle than that observed in SMS mice. Third, they found that Rai1 deletion reduced excitability of PVH BDNF neurons.

Strengths:<br /> The study provides additional evidence linking BDNF deficiency to hyperphagia and obesity associated with SMS. Furthermore, the study shows that deletion of only one copy of the Rai1 gene in all BDNF-expressing cells did not cause obesity. This result indicates that BDNF deficiency only has a minor contribution to the metabolic symptoms associated with SMS patients who lose one copy of the RAI1 gene. The discovery that Rai1 is important for excitability of PVH BDNF neurons is interesting.

Weaknesses:<br /> The main mechanism underlying SMS-associated obesity remains to be identified. This limitation is discussed in this revised manuscript. The authors also address my previous concerns in this revised manuscript.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Chen et al have identified a new candidate gene for high myopia, ZC3H11A, and using a knock-out mouse model, have attempted to validate it as a myopia gene and explain a potential mechanism. They identified 4 heterozygous missense variants in highly myopic teenagers. These variants are in conserved regions of the protein, but the authors provide no evidence that these specific variants affect protein function. They then created a knock-out mouse. Heterozygotes show myopia at all ages examined but increased axial length only at very early ages. Unfortunately, the authors do not address this point or examine corneal structure in these animals. They show that the mice have decreased B-wave amplitude on electroretinogram (a sign of retinal dysfunction associated with bipolar cells), and decreased expression of a bipolar cell marker, PKC. They do not address, however, whether there are fewer bipolar cells, or simply decreased expression of the marker protein. On electron microscopy, there are morphologic differences in the outer nuclear layer (where bipolar, amacrine, and horizontal cell bodies reside). Transcriptome analysis identified over 700 differentially expressed genes. The authors chose to focus on the PI3K-AKT and NF-B signaling pathways and show changes in the expression of genes and proteins in those pathways, including PI3K, AKT, IB, NF-B, TGF-1, MMP-2, and IL-6, although there is very high variability between animals. They propose that myopia may develop in these animals either as a result of visual abnormality (decreased bipolar cell function in the retina) or by alteration of NF-B signaling. These data provide an interesting new candidate variant for the development of high myopia, and provide additional data that MMP2 and IL6 have a role in myopia development, but do not support the claim of the title that myopia is caused by an inflammatory reaction.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Receptor kinases (RKs) perceive extracellular signals to regulate many processes in plants. FLS2 is an RK that acts as a pattern-recognition receptor (PRR) to recognize bacterial flagellin and activate pattern-triggered immunity (PTI). PRRs such as FLS2 have been previously shown to reside within PM nanodomains, which can regulate downstream PTI signaling. In the current manuscript, Cui et al use single particle tracking to characterize the effect of previously-described phosposite mutants (FLS2-S938A/D) on the PM organization, endocytosis, and signaling functions of FLS2. The authors confirm that FLS2-S938D but not -S938A is functional for flg22-induced responses, while also demonstrating that phopshodead mutation at this site (S938A) prevents flg22-induced sorting into nanodomains and endocytosis. These results are consistent with S938 being an important phosphorylation site for FLS2 function, however, they fall short of demonstrating that membrane disorganization of FLS2-938A is responsible for downstream signaling defects.

Strengths:<br /> The authors' experiments (single particle tracking, co-localization, etc) do a good job of demonstrating how a non-functional version of FLS2 (S938A) does not alter its spatio-temporal dynamics, nanodomain organization, and endocytosis in response to flg22, suggesting that these require a functional receptor and are regulated by intracellular signaling components.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors do not provide direct evidence that S938 phosphorylation specifically affects membrane organization, rather than FLS2 signaling more generally. All evidence is consistent with S938A being a non-functional version of FLS2, wherein an activated/functional receptor is required for all downstream events including membrane re-organization, downstream signalling, internalization, etc. Furthermore, the authors never demonstrate that this site is phosphorylated in planta in the basal or flg22-elicited state.

As written, the manuscript also has numerous scientific issues, including a misleading/incomplete description of plant immune signaling, lack of context from previous work, and extensive use of inappropriate references.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The main question of this article is as follows: "To what extent does having information on brain-age improve our ability to capture declines in fluid cognition beyond knowing a person's chronological age?" This question is worthwhile, considering that there is considerable confusion in the field about the nature of brain-age.

Comments on revised version:

Thank you to the authors for addressing so many of my concerns with this revision. There are a few points that I feel still need addressing/clarifying related to 1) calculating brain cognition, 2) the inevitability of their results, and 3) their continued recommendation to use brain-age metrics.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This manuscript reports a novel pedigree with four intact copies of RHO on a single chromosome which appears to lead to overexpression of rhodopsin and a corresponding autosomal dominant form of RP. The authors generate retinal organoids from patient- and control-derived cells, characterize the phenotypes of the organoids, and then attempt to 'treat' aberrant rhodopsin expression/mislocalization in the patient organoids using a small molecule called photoregulin 3 (PR3). While this novel genetic mechanism for adRP is interesting, the organoid work is not compelling. There are multiple problems related to the technical approaches, the presentation of the results, and the interpretations of the data. I will present my concerns roughly in the order in which they appear in the manuscript.

Major concerns:<br /> (1) Individual human retinal organoids in culture can show a wide range of differentiation phenotypes with respect to the expression of specific markers, percentages of given cell types, etc. For this reason, it can be very difficult to make rigorous, quantitative comparisons between 'wild-type' and 'mutant' organoids. Despite this difficulty, the author of the present manuscript frequently presents results in an impressionistic manner without quantitation. Furthermore, there is no indication that the investigator who performed the phenotypic analyses was blind with respect to the genotype. In my opinion, such blinding is essential for the analysis of phenotypes in retinal organoids.

To give an example, in lines 193-194 the authors write "we observed that while the patient organoids developing connecting cilium and the inner segments similar to control organoids, they failed to extend outer segments". Outer segments almost never form normally in human retinal organoids, even when derived from 'wild-type' cells. Thus, I consider it wholly inadequate to simply state that outer segment formation 'failed' without a rigorous, quantitative, and blinded comparison of patient and control organoids.

(2) The presentation of qPCR results in Figure 3A is very confusing. First, the authors normalize expression to that of CRX, but they don't really explain why. In lines 210-211, they write "CRX, a ubiquitously expressing photoreceptor gene maintained from development to adulthood." Several parts of this sentence are misleading or incomplete. First, CRX is not 'ubiquitously expressed' (which usually means 'in all cell types') nor is it photoreceptor-specific: CRX is expressed in rods, cones, and bipolar cells. Furthermore, CRX expression levels are not constant in photoreceptors throughout development/adulthood. So, for these reasons alone, CRX is a poor choice for the normalization of photoreceptor gene expression.

Second, the authors' interpretation of the qPCR results (lines 216-218) is very confusing. The authors appear to be saying that there is a statistically significant increase in RHO levels between D120 and D300. However, the same change is observed in both control and patient organoids and is not unexpected, since the organoids are more mature at D300. The key comparison is between control and patient organoids at D300. At this time point, there appears to be no difference between control and patient. The authors don't even point this out in the main text.

Third, the variability in the number of photoreceptor cells in individual organoids makes a whole-organoid comparison by qPCR fraught with difficulty. It seems to me that what is needed here is a comparison of RHO transcript levels in isolated rod photoreceptors.

(3) I cannot understand what the authors are comparing in the bulk RNA-seq analysis presented in the paragraph starting with line 222 and in the paragraph starting with line 306. They write "we performed bulk-RNA sequencing on 300-days-old retinal organoids (n=3 independent biological replicates). Patient retinal organoids demonstrated upregulated transcriptomic levels of RHO... comparable to the qRT-PCR data." From the wording, it suggests that they are comparing bulk RNA-seq of patients and control organoids at D300. However, this is not stated anywhere in the main text, the figure legend, or the Methods. Yet, the subsequent line "comparable to the qRT-PCR data" makes no sense, because the qPCR comparison was between patient samples at two different time points, D120 and D300, not between patient and control. Thus, the reader is left with no clear idea of what is even being compared by RNA-seq analysis.

Remarkably, the exact same lack of clarity as to what is being compared is found in the second RNA-seq analysis presented in the paragraph starting with line 306. Here the authors write "We further carried out bulk RNA-sequencing analysis to comprehensively characterize three different groups of organoids, 0.25 μM PR3-treated and vehicle-treated patient organoids and control (RC) organoids from three independent differentiation experiments. Consistent with the qRT-PCR gene expression analysis, the results showed a significant downregulation in RHO and other rod phototransduction genes." Here, the authors make it clear that they have performed RNA-seq on three types of samples: PR3-treated patient organoids, vehicle-treated patient organoids, and control organoids (presumably not treated). Yet, in the next sentence, they state "the results showed a significant downregulation in RHO", but they don't state what two of the three conditions are being compared! Although I can assume that the comparison presented in Fig. 6A is between patient vehicle-treated and PR3-treated organoids, this is nowhere explicitly stated in the manuscript.

(4) There are multiple flaws in the analysis and interpretation of the PR3 treatment results. The authors wrote (lines 289-2945) "We treated long-term cultured 300-days-old, RHO-CNV patient retinal organoids with varying concentrations of PR3 (0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 μM) for one week and assessed the effects on RHO mRNA expression and protein localization. Immunofluorescence staining of PR3-treated organoids displayed a partial rescue of RHO localization with optimal trafficking observed in the 0.25 μM PR3-treated organoids (Figure 5B). None of the organoids showed any evidence of toxicity post-treatment."

There are multiple problems here. First, the results are impressionistic and not quantitative. Second, it's not clear that the investigator was blinded with respect to the treatment condition. Third, in the sections presented, the organoids look much more disorganized in the PR3-treated conditions than in the control. In particular, the ONL looks much more poorly formed. Overall, I'd say the organoids looked considerably worse in the 0.25 and 0.5 microM conditions than in the control, but I don't know whether or not the images are representative. Without rigorously quantitative and blinded analysis, it is impossible to draw solid conclusions here. Lastly, the authors state that "none of the organoids showed any evidence of toxicity post-treatment," but do not explain what criteria were used to determine that there was no toxicity.

(5) qPCR-based quantitation of rod gene expression changes in response to PR3 treatment is not well-designed. In lines 294-297 the authors wrote "PR3 drove a significant downregulation of RHO in a dose-dependent manner. Following qRT-PCR analysis, we observed a 2-to-5 log2FC decrease in RHO expression, along with smaller decreases in other rod-specific genes including NR2E3, GNAT1 and PDE6B." I assume these analyses were performed on cDNA derived from whole organoids. There are two problems with this analysis/interpretation. First, a decrease in rod gene expression can be caused by a decrease in the number of rods in the treated organoids (e.g., by cell death) or by a decrease in the expression of rod genes within individual rods. The authors do not distinguish between these two possibilities. Second, as stated above, the percentage of cells that are rods in a given organoid can vary from organoid to organoid. So, to determine whether there is downregulation of rod gene expression, one should ideally perform the qPCR analysis on purified rods.

(6) In Figure 4B 'RM' panels, the authors show RHO staining around the somata of 'rods' but the inset images suggest that several of these cells lack both NRL and OTX2 staining in their nuclei. All rods should be positive for NRL. Conversely, the same image shows a layer of cells scleral to the cells with putative RHO somal staining which do not show somal staining, and yet they do appear to be positive for NRL and OTX2. What is going on here? The authors need to provide interpretations for these findings.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this manuscript, Rana and colleagues examined the effect of a "low impact" ampakine, an AMPA receptor allosteric modulator, on the voiding function of rats subjected to midline T9 spinal cord contusion injury. Previous studies have shown that the micturition reflex fully depends on AMPA glutaminergic signaling, and, that the glutaminergic circuits are reorganized after spinal cord injury. In chronic paraplegic rats, other circuits (no glutaminergic) become engaged in the spinal reflex mechanism controlling micturition. The authors employed continuous flow cystometry and external urethral sphincter electromyography to assess bladder function and bladder-urethral sphincter coordination in naïve rats (control) and rats subjected to spinal cord injury (SCI). In the acute phase after SCI, rats exhibit larger voids with lower frequency than naïve rats. This study shows that CX1739 improves, in a dose-dependent manner, bladder function in rats with SCI. The interval between voids and the voided volume was reduced in rats with SCI when compared to controls. In summary, this is an interesting study that describes a potential treatment for patients with SCI.

Strengths:<br /> The findings described in this manuscript are significant because neurogenic bladder predisposes patients with SCI to urinary tract infections, hydronephrosis, and kidney failure. The manuscript is clearly written. The study is technically outstanding, and the conclusions are well justified by the data.

Weaknesses:<br /> The study was conducted 5 days after spinal cord contusion when the bladder is underactive. In rats with chronic SCI, the bladder is overactive. Therefore, the therapeutic approach described here is expected to be effective only in the underactive bladder phase of SCI. The mechanism and site of action of CX1739 is not defined.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Ban et al. investigated the role of ribosome biogenesis (RiBi) in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and its contribution to chemoresistance in breast cancer. They used a Tri-PyMT EMT lineage-tracing model and scRNA-seq to analyze EMT status and found that RiBi was elevated during both EMT and mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) of cancer cells. They further revealed that nascent protein synthesis mediated by ERK and mTOR signaling pathways was essential for the completion of RiBi. Inhibiting excessive RiBi impaired EMT and MET capability. More importantly, combinatorial treatment with RiBi inhibitors and chemotherapy drugs reduced metastatic outgrowth of both epithelial and mesenchymal tumor cells. These results suggest that targeting the RiBi pathway may be an effective strategy for treating advanced breast cancer with EMT-related chemoresistance.

Strengths:<br /> The conclusions of this study are generally supported by the data. However, some weaknesses still exist as mentioned below.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1) The study predominantly focused on RiBi as a target for overcoming EMT-related chemoresistance. Thus, it will be necessary to provide some canonical outcomes after upregulating ribosome biogenesis, such as translation activity. I would suggest ribosome profiling or puromycin-incorporation assay, or other more suitable experiments.

2) The results were basically obtained from mice and in vitro experiments. While these results provide valuable insights, it will be valuable to validate part of the findings using some tissue samples from patients (e.g. RiBi activity) to determine the clinical relevance and potential therapeutic applications.

3) The results revealed that mTORC1 and ERK mediated RiBi activation. How about mTORC2? It will be informative to evaluate mTORC2 signaling.

4) The results also demonstrated promising synergic effects of Pol I inhibitor (BMH21) and chemotherapy drug (CTX) on chemo-resistant metastasis. How about using the inhibitors of mTORC1 together with CTX?

5) While the results demonstrate the potential efficacy of RiBi inhibitors in reducing metastatic outgrowth, other factors and mechanisms contributing to chemoresistance may exist and need further investigation. I would suggest some discussion about this aspect.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

The vesicular monoamine transporter is a key component in neuronal signaling and is implicated in diseases such as Parkinson's. Understanding of monoamine processing and our ability to target that process therapeutically has been to date provided by structural modeling and extensive biochemical studies. However, structural data is required to establish these findings more firmly.

Strengths:

Dalton et al resolved a structure of VMAT2 in the presence of an important inhibitor, tetrabenazine, with the protein in detergent micelles, using cryo-EM and with the aid of domains fused to its N- and C-terminal ends. The resolution of the maps allows clear assignment of the amino acids in the core of the protein. The structure is in good agreement with a wealth of experimental and structural prediction data and provides important insights into the binding site for tetrabenazine and selectivity relative to analogous compounds.

Weaknesses:

The authors follow up their structures with molecular dynamics simulations. The simulations resulted in repositioning of the ligand, which does not seem to be well founded, and raises questions about the methodological choices made for the simulations.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Churgin et. al. seeks to understand the neural substrates of individual odor preference in the Drosophila antennal lobe, using paired behavioral testing and calcium imaging from ORNs and PNs in the same flies, and testing whether ORN and PN odor responses can predict behavioral preference. The manuscript's main claims are that ORN activity in response to a panel of odors is predictive of the individual's preference for 3-octanol (3-OCT) relative to clean air, and that activity in the projection neurons is predictive of both 3-OCT vs. air preference and 3-OCT vs. 4-methylcyclohexanol (MCH). They find that the difference in density of fluorescently-tagged brp (a presynaptic marker) in two glomeruli (DC2 and DM2) trends towards predicting behavioral preference between 3-oct vs. MCH. Implementing a model of the antennal lobe based on the available connectome data, they find that glomerulus-level variation in response reminiscent of the variation that they observe can be generated by resampling variables associated with the glomeruli, such as ORN identity and glomerular synapse density.

Strengths:<br /> The authors investigate a highly significant and impactful problem of interest to all experimental biologists, nearly all of whom must often conduct their measurements in many different individuals and so have a vested interest in understanding this problem. The manuscript represents a lot of work, with challenging paired behavioral and neural measurements.

Weaknesses:<br /> The overall impression is that the authors are attempting to explain complex, highly variable behavioral output with a comparatively limited set of neural measurements. Given the degree of behavioral variability they observe within an individual (Figure 1- supp 1) which implies temporal/state/measurement variation in behavior, it's unclear that their degree of sampling can resolve true individual variability (what they call "idiosyncrasy") in neural responses, given the additional temporal/state/measurement variation in neural responses. The statistical analyses in the manuscript are underdeveloped, and it's unclear the degree to which the correlations reported have explanatory (causative) power in accounting for organismal behavior.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This paper offers a fundamental advance in our understanding of communication between human sensory neurons and keratinocytes in the skin of humans. The work, which used EM and expansion microscopy, shows that axons tunnel through keratinocytes and form gap junctions along the axon as it passes by or potentially where it is ensheathed by the cell. This is a fairly remarkable arrangement and is seen both in vivo and in vitro.

The major strengths are the quality of the imaging, the use of expansion microscopy to reveal new anatomical information and the new insight the detailed work offers to our understanding of sensory neuroscience. Another major strength is that the work was done in humans, and using human cells in vitro. I think the authors have achieved their goal of thoroughly characterizing this interesting interaction between sensory neurons and keratinocytes. The obvious next step is to understand if these interactions become pathological in neuropathies.

I do think there are some weaknesses that should be addressed, and some questions that are outstanding that the authors might want to discuss. Chief amongst these is the question of what types of sensory neurons form these contacts with keratinocytes and do these change in clinical neuropathies. A more thorough discussion of these issues for future investigation would help to place the findings in the broader context of the field, in my opinion.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This important body of work aims at identifying the divergent phototransduction pathways in different subtypes of melanopsin-expressing retinal ganglion cells. The authors use a combination of patch-clamp recordings of three subtypes of ipRGCs M1, M2, and M4, and their post hoc rigorous identification. The authors demonstrate that within their conditions of recordings and the choice of light stimulus recorded ipRGCs subtypes do not signal via HCN channels as previously proposed; and that M1 signal via TRPC channel, M2 signal via TRPC, or a newly identified T-Type Ca2+ channel. While the data seem to support the authors' claims that HCN channels are not involved in phototransduction pathways of ipRGCs here, the light stimulus used is different than in the previous study (Jing et al, 2018) which contradicts this claim. This opens up questions on whether this inconsistency originates in differences in light stimulus used in these studies or something else.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Chi et al investigated the value of ctDNA for predicting the prognosis and monitoring the treatment response in mTNBC patients. They found that patients with ctDNA+, had a shorter progression-free survival (PFS) than ctDNA− patients (5.16 months vs. 9.05 months, P = 0.001) and ctDNA+ was independently associated with a shorter PFS (HR, 95%CI: 2.67, 1.2-5.96; P = 0.016) by multivariable analyses. This study provides novel insight into the mutational landscape of mTNBC and may reliably predict the prognosis and treatment response of mTNBC patients. Overall, this study is interesting and important.

Strengths<br /> This study is well designed and novel.

Weaknesses<br /> This is a single-center study. Future studies may further validate the findings in other centers.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This study reports how human OFC lesions impact neural responses to sounds that are surprising with respect to local (sequences of sounds) and global expectations (sequences of sequences). The authors have used a clever global-local paradigm that dissociates hierarchical levels of expectations. The results are interpreted under the framework of predictive coding. A comparison with healthy controls and a group of lateral prefrontal cortex patients highlights the specific role of OFC in the reported effects.

Strengths

This study is methodologically sound, employing the well-established global-local paradigm and a set of classical event related analyses to disentangle different types of auditory expectations and answer the research question. The use of EEG in OFC patients provides causal evidence linking this area with altered evoked responses. Furthermore, the comparison with another lesion group (lateral PFC) provides evidence for a specific role of the OFC in the reported effects. The study contributes an interesting piece of evidence and does a good job placing the findings in the landscape of the relevant literature.

Weaknesses

The central claim of the study is that hierarchical predictive processing is altered in OFC patients. However, OFC patients were able to identify global deviants as well as controls. Thus, hierarchical predictive processing itself seems to be unaltered, even though its neural correlates were different. This begs the question of what exactly the functional meaning of the EEG findings is. From the evidence presented this is difficult to determine for three reasons.

First, it is possible that the shifts in scalp potentials are due to volume conduction differences linked to post-lesion changes in neural tissue and anatomy rather than differences in information processing per se. Second, it is unclear from the analyses whether the P3a amplitude differences are true amplitude differences or a byproduct of latency differences. The reason is that the statistical method used (cluster based permutations) might yield significant effects when the latency of a component is shifted, even if peak amplitudes are the same. Complementary analyses on mean or peak amplitudes could resolve this issue.

The third reason is that the MMN, P3a and P3b components are difficult to map to the hierarchical PC theory. Traditionally, the MMN is ascribed to lower level processing while P3a and P3b are ascribed to higher level processing. However, the picture is more complicated. For example, the current results show that the MMN is enhanced in local + global surprise while the P3a is elicited by local surprise. Furthermore, the P3a is classically interpreted as reflecting attention reorientation and the P3b as reflecting the conscious detection of task-relevant targets. How attention and conscious awareness fit in hierarchical PC is not entirely clear. Moreover, the fact that lateral PFC patients show unaltered neural responses contradicts prominent views from PC identifying this region as a generator of the MMN and a source of predictions sent to temporal auditory areas.

For these reasons, a more critical view on the extent to which the findings support hierarchical predictive coding is needed.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Lu, Zhang et al. utilize siRNA-mediated depletion and ectopic expression to show that CUL1-7, the scaffold proteins of CRLs, control levels of ectopically expressed cyclin D1, but not a phosphorylation deficient cyclin D1 variant (T286A) in HEK293 cells. This process occurs in a proteasome-dependent manner. Through an siRNA screen for CRL substrate adaptors in NIH3T3 cells, using a previously established Cyclin D1 activity reporter, the authors then identify the CRL adaptors KEAP1 (CRL3), DDB2 (CRL4A/B), and WSB2 (CRL2/5) as new candidate regulators of cyclin D1. They provide evidence that these CRL substrate adaptors, when ectopically expressed, co-immunoprecipitate with endogenous cyclin D1 and induce ubiquitylation and proteasomal degradation of ectopically expressed cyclin D1 in HEK293 cells. In addition, through siRNA depletion and CHX chase assays, the authors provide evidence that KEAP1, DDB2, and WSB2 are regulating the half-life of endogenous cyclin D1 in HEK293 cells. Finally, experiments in HCT-116 cells that ectopic expression of KEAP1, DDB2, and WSB2, inhibit cell growth in cells stably expressing exogenous cyclin D1, but not a phosphorylation deficient cyclin D1 variant (T286A). From these results, the authors conclude that cyclin D1 degradation in cells is mediated by multiple CRLs.

Strength:<br /> This study identifies new candidate regulators of cyclin D1 protein levels KEAP1, DDB2, and WSB2.

Weaknesses:<br /> While this study provides evidence that KEAP1, DDB2, and WSB2 are candidate regulators of cyclin D1 protein levels, the co-IP experiments and CHX chases lack important controls or are not convincing. More importantly, there are no experiments demonstrating that cyclin D1 is directly ubiquitylated by these substrate adaptors in the context of their respective CRL complexes, the main conclusion of this short report. Another major weakness is the omission of recent studies that demonstrate that the major E3 ligase degrading cyclin D(1-3) is CRL4-AMBRA1 (Simoneschi et al., Nature 2021; Maiani et al., Nature 2021; Chaikovsky et al., Nature 2021). In these studies, three independent groups taking complementary approaches show that in several cell lines and contexts CRL4-AMBRA1 is the only ligase degrading cyclin D and other cullins and substrate adaptors have little to no effect. While these data do not rule out the existence of other CRLs regulating cyclin D, they raise the question of under which conditions and in which cell lines other CRLs would be important for cyclin D degradation, a question that is not addressed or discussed.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The exploratory cohort study examined the efficacy and safety of immunotherapy in combination with SBRT and cytotoxic chemotherapy. The results are well supported by the data, which may be used as justification for further fundamental investigation and larger-scale randomized control trials. Although immunotherapy is the focus of this study's main innovation, a stronger and more thorough discussion of specific immunotherapy-related difficulties is necessary.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Ji et al dissects the important role of lysosomes in cellular metabolism and signaling and their regulation by various associated proteins. The authors utilized deep proteomic profiling in C.Elegans to identify lysosome-associated proteins involved in regulating longevity and discovered the recruitment of AMPK and nucleoporin proteins in response to increased lysosomal lipolysis. Additionally, the authors found lysosomal heterogeneity across different tissues and specific enrichment of the Ragulator complex on Cystinosin-positive lysosomes.

Strengths of this work include the utilization of deep proteomic profiling to identify novel lysosome-associated proteins involved in longevity regulation, as well as the discovery of lysosomal heterogeneity and specific protein enrichments across different worm tissues. These findings point to a complex interplay between lysosomal protein dynamics, signal transduction, organelle crosstalk, and organism longevity.

One weakness of this work may be the limited scope of the study, as it focuses primarily on the identification and characterization of lysosome-associated proteins involved in longevity regulation, with limited mechanistic follow-up and some unsubstantiated claims.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Birman and colleagues have introduced an invaluable tool designed specifically for electrophysiologists, simplifying the precise planning of trajectories for placing high-density probes within designated locations. Pinpoint offers users an interactive 3D environment within which they can explore electrophysiological trajectories within the anatomical context of the mouse brain. Within this environment, users can visualize the probe, target regions, and the constraints imposed by their experimental setup. Advanced users also have the flexibility to customize the entire Pinpoint scene to align with alternative coordinate systems and rig geometries. In cases involving multiple-probe recordings, Pinpoint shows 3D paths while issuing warnings about potential collisions. Additionally, Pinpoint can account for the individual variability in brain size among mice.

Strengths:<br /> Pinpoint provides real-time visualization of current brain region targets alongside neural data. Anatomical targeting information is accessible live during recordings. This is made possible through two sets of features: hardware that allows Pinpoint to communicate with micro-manipulators and software that broadcasts the current location of each recording channel to data acquisition software. Researchers can monitor the precise positioning of their probe during insertion and observe the anatomical locations of live electrophysiology data throughout an experiment, enabling them to make corrections if necessary.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. Pinpoint's novelty lies in its ability to be linked to data acquisition programs and electronic micro-manipulators. However, a similar program, Neuropixels Trajectory Explorer, was released before Pinpoint with comparable features. Please refer to https://github.com/petersaj/neuropixels_trajectory_explorer. It would be beneficial to clarify the distinctions between these two applications and discuss on the necessity and advantages of creating Pinpoint.

2. Currently, in Pinpoint, users can only select one area of the mouse brain for probe placement and then use the controller to adjust the probe´s position if they wish to target multiple brain areas. This can complicate planning when inserting multiple probes. It would be advantageous to have the option to choose the specific areas the probes are to traverse, with Pinpoint automatically suggesting the most optimal trajectories while avoiding potential collisions. While this may require additional development, a comment on this possibility would be appreciated.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Harada and colleagues describe an interesting set of experiments characterizing the relationship between dopamine cell activity in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and orexin neuron activity in the lateral hypothalamus (LH). All experiments are conducted in the context of an opto-Pavlovian learning task, in which a cue predicts optogenetic stimulation of VTA dopamine neurons. With training, cues that predict DA stimulation come to elicit dopamine release in LH (a similar effect is seen in accumbens). After training, omission trials (cue followed by no laser) result in a dip (inhibition) of dopamine release in LH, characteristic of reward prediction error observed in the striatum. Across cue training, the activity pattern of orexin neurons in LH mirrors that of LH DA levels. However, unlike the DA signal, orexin neurons do not exhibit a decrease in activity in omission trials. Systemic blockade of D2 but not D1 receptors blocked DA release in LH following VTA DA cell stimulation.

Strengths:<br /> Although much work has been dedicated to examining projections from orexin cells to VTA, less has been done to characterize reciprocal projections and their function. In this way, this paper is a very important addition to the literature. The experiments are technically sound (with some limitations, below) and utilize sophisticated approaches, the manuscript is nicely written, and the conclusions are mostly reasonable based on the data collected.

Weaknesses:<br /> I believe the impact of the paper could be enhanced by considering and/or addressing the following:

Major:<br /> • I encourage the authors to discuss in the Introduction previous work on DA regulation of orexin neurons. In particular, the authors cite, but do not describe in any detail, the very relevant Linehan paper (2019; Am J Physiol Regul) which shows that DA differentially alters excitatory/inhibitory input onto orexin neurons and that these actions are reversed by D1 vs D2 receptor antagonists. Another paper (Bubser, 2005, EJN) showed that dopamine agonists increase the activity of orexin neurons and that these effects are blocked by D1/D2 antagonists. The current findings should be discussed in the context of these (and any other relevant) papers in the Discussion, too.<br /> • In the Discussion, the authors provide two (plausible) explanations for why they did not observe a dip in the calcium signal of orexin neurons during omission trials. Is it not possible that these cells do not encode for this type of RPE?<br /> • Related to the above - I am curious about the authors' thoughts on why there is such redundancy in the system. i.e. why is dopamine doing the same thing in NAC and LH in the context of cue-reward learning?<br /> • The data, as they stand, are largely correlative and do not indicate that DA recruitment of orexin neurons is necessary for learning to occur. It would be compelling if blocking the orexin cell recruitment affected some behavioral outcomes of learning. Similarly - does raclopride treatment across training prevent learning?<br /> • Only single doses of SCH23390 and raclopride were used. How were these selected? It would be nice to use more of a dose range to show that 1) and effect of D1R blockade was not missed, and 2) that the reduction in orexin signal with raclopride was dose-dependent.<br /> • Fig 1C, could the effect the authors observed be due to movement? Relatedly, what was the behavior like when the cue was on? Did mice orient/approach the cue? Also, when does the learning about the cue occur? Does it take all 10 days of learning or does this learning/cue-induced increase in dopamine signaling occur in less than 10 days?<br /> • Also related to the above, could the observed dopamine signal be a result of just the laser turning on? It would seem important to include mice with a control sensor.<br /> • Fig 1E, the effect seems to be driven by one mouse which looks like it could be a statistical outlier. The inclusion of additional animals would make these data more compelling.<br /> • For Fig 1C, 3D, 3F, and 4D, could the authors please show the traces for the entire length of laser onset? It would be helpful to see both the rise and the fall of dopamine signals.<br /> • Fig 2C, could the authors comment on how they compared the AUC to baseline? Was this comparison against zero? Because of natural hills and troughs during signals prior to cue (which may not equate to a zero), comparing the omission-induced dip to a zero may not be appropriate. A better baseline might be using the signals prior to the cue.<br /> • Could the authors comment on how they came up with the 4-5.3s window to observe the AUC in Fig 3H?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors conducted a human fMRI study investigating the omission of expected electrical shocks with varying probabilities. Participants were informed of the probability of shock and shock intensity trial-by-trial. The time point corresponding to the absence of the expected shock (with varying probability) was framed as a prediction error producing the cognitive state of relief/pleasure for the participant. fMRI activity in the VTA/SN and ventral putamen corresponded to the surprising omission of a high probability shock. Participants' subjective relief at having not been shocked correlated with activity in brain regions typically associated with reward-prediction errors. The overall conclusion of the manuscript was that the absence of an expected aversive outcome in human fMRI looks like a reward-prediction error seen in other studies that use positive outcomes.

Strengths:<br /> Overall, I found this to be a well-written human neuroimaging study investigating an often overlooked question on the role of aversive prediction errors, and how they may differ from reward-related prediction errors. The paper is well-written and the fMRI methods seem mostly rigorous and solid.

Weaknesses:<br /> I did have some confusion over the use of the term "prediction-error" however as it is being used in this task. There is certainly an expectancy violation when participants are told there is a high probability of shock, and it doesn't occur. Yet, there is no relevant learning or updating, and participants are explicitly told that each trial is independent and the outcome (or lack thereof) does not affect the chances of getting the shock on another trial with the same instructed outcome probability. Prediction errors are primarily used in the context of a learning model (reinforcement learning, etc.), but without a need to learn, the utility of that signal is unclear.

An overarching question posed by the researchers is whether relief from not receiving a shock is a reward. They take as neural evidence activity in regions usually associated with reward prediction errors, like the VTA/SN. This seems to be a strong case of reverse inference. The evidence may have been stronger had the authors compared activity to a reward prediction error, for example using a similar task but with reward outcomes. As it stands, the neural evidence that the absence of shock is actually "pleasurable" is limited-albeit there is a subjective report asking subjects if they felt relief.

I have some other comments, and I elaborate on those above comments, below:

1. A major assumption in the paper is that the unexpected absence of danger constitutes a pleasurable event, as stated in the opening sentence of the abstract. This may sometimes be the case, but it is not universal across contexts or people. For instance, for pathological fears, any relief derived from exposure may be short-lived (the dog didn't bite me this time, but that doesn't mean it won't next time or that all dogs are safe). And even if the subjective feeling one gets is temporary relief at that moment when the expected aversive event is not delivered, I believe there is an overall conflation between the concepts of relief and pleasure throughout the manuscript. Overall, the manuscript seems to be framed on the assumption that "aversive expectations can transform neutral outcomes into pleasurable events," but this is situationally dependent and is not a common psychological construct as far as I am aware.

2. The authors allude to this limitation, but I think it is critical. Specifically, the study takes a rather simplistic approach to prediction errors. It treats the instructed probability as the subjects' expectancy level and treats the prediction error as omission related activity to this instructed probability. There is no modeling, and any dynamic parameters affected by learning are unaccounted for in this design. That is subjects are informed that each trial is independently determined and so there is no learning "the presence/absence of stimulations on previous trials could not predict the presence/absence of stimulation on future trials." Prediction errors are central to learning. It is unclear if the "relief" subjects feel on not getting a shock on a high-probability trial is in any way analogous to a prediction error, because there is no reason to update your representation on future trials if they are all truly independent. The construct validity of the design is in question.

3. Related to the above point, even if subjects veered away from learning by the instruction that each trial is independent, the fact remains that they do not get shocks outside of the 100% probability shock. So learning is occurring, at least for subjects who realize the probability cue is actually a ruse.

4. Bouton has described very well how the absence of expected threat during extinction can create a feeling of ambiguity and uncertainty regarding the signal value of the CS. This in large part explains the contextual dependence of extinction and the "return of fear" that is so prominent even in psychologically healthy participants. The relief people feel when not receiving an expected shock would seem to have little bearing on changing the long-term value of the CS. In any event, the authors do talk about conditioning (CS-US) in the paper, but this is not a typical conditioning study, as there is no learning.

5. In Figure 2 A-D, the omission responses are plotted on trials with varying levels of probability. However, it seems to be missing omission responses in 0% trials in these brain regions. As depicted, it is an incomplete view of activity across the different trial types of increasing threat probability.

6. If I understand Figure 2 panels E-H, these are plotting responses to the shock versus no-shock (when no-shock was expected). It is unclear why this would be especially informative, as it would just be showing activity associated with shocks versus no-shocks. If the goal was to use this as a way to compare positive and negative prediction errors, the shock would induce widespread activity that is not necessarily reflective of a prediction error. It is simply a response to a shock. Comparing activity to shocks delivered after varying levels of probability (e.g., a shock delivered at 25% expectancy, versus 75%, versus 100%) would seem to be a much better test of a prediction error signal than shock versus no-shock.

7. I was unclear what the results in Figure 3 E-H were showing that was unique from panels A-D, or where it was described. The images looked redundant from the images in A-D. I see that they come from different contrasts (non0% > 0%; 100% > 0%), but I was unclear why that was included.

8. As mentioned earlier, there is a tendency to imply that subjects felt relief because there was activity in "the reward pathway."

9. From the methods, it wasn't entirely clear where there is jitter in the course of a trial. This centers on the question of possible collinearity in the task design between the cue and the outcome. The authors note there is "no multicollinearity between anticipation and omission regressors in the first-level GLMs," but how was this quantified? The issue is of course that the activity coded as omission may be from the anticipation of the expected outcome.

10. I did not fully understand what the LASSO-PCR model using relief ratings added. This result was not discussed in much depth, and seems to show a host of clusters throughout the brain contributing positively or negatively to the model. Altogether, I would recommend highlighting what this analysis is uniquely contributing to the interpretation of the findings.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In the 'bCFS' paradigm, a monocular target gradually increases in contrast until it breaks interocular suppression by a rich monocular suppressor in the other eye. The present authors extend the bCFS paradigm by allowing the target to reduce back down in contrast until it becomes suppressed again. The main variable of interest is the contrast difference between breaking suppression and (re) entering suppression. The authors find this difference to be constant across a range of target types, even ones that differ substantially in the contrast at which they break interocular suppression (the variable conventionally measured in bCFS). They also measure how the difference changes as a function of other manipulations. Interpretation in terms of the processing of unconscious visual content, as well as in terms of the mechanism of interocular suppression.

Strengths:<br /> Interpretation of bCFS findings is mired in controversy, and this is an ingenuous effort to move beyond the paradigm's exclusive focus on breaking suppression. The notion of using the contrast difference between breaking and entering suppression as an index of suppression depth is interesting, but I also feel like it can be misleading at times, as detailed below.

Weaknesses:<br /> Here's one doubt about the 'contrast difference' measure used by the authors. The authors seem confident that a simple subtraction is meaningful after the logarithmic transformation of contrast values, but doesn't this depend on exactly what shape the contrast-response function of the relevant neural process has? Does a logarithmic transformation linearize this function irrespective of, say, the level of processing or the aspect of processing that we're talking about? Given that stimuli differ in terms of the absolute levels at which they break (and re-enter) suppression, the linearity assumption needs to be well supported for the contrast difference measure to be comparable across stimuli.

Here's a more conceptual doubt. The authors introduce their work by discussing ambiguities in the interpretation of bCFS findings with regard to preferential processing, unconscious processing, etc. A large part of the manuscript doesn't really interpret the present 'suppression depth' findings in those terms, but at the start of the discussion section (lines 560-567) the authors do draw fairly strong conclusions along those lines: they seem to argue that the constant 'suppression depth' value observed across different stimuli argues against preferential processing of any of the stimuli, let alone under suppression. I'm not sure I understand this reasoning. Consider the scenario that the visual system does preferentially process, say, emotional face images, and that it does so under suppression as well as outside of suppression. In that scenario, one might expect the contrast at which such a face breaks suppression to be low (because the face is preferentially processed under suppression) and one might also expect the contrast at which the face enters suppression to be low (because the face is preferentially processed outside of suppression). So the difference between the two contrasts might not stand out: it might be the same as for a stimulus that is not preferentially processed at all. In sum, even though the author's label of 'suppression depth' on the contrast difference measure is reasonable from some perspectives, it also seems to be misleading when it comes to what the difference measure can actually tell us that bCFS cannot.

The authors acknowledge that non-zero reaction time inflates their 'suppression depth' measure, and acknowledge that this inflation is worse when contrast ramps more quickly. But they argue that these effects are too small to explain either the difference between breaking contrast and re-entering contrast to begin with, or the increase in this difference with the contrast ramping rate. I agree with the former: I have no doubt that stimuli break suppression (ramping up) at a higher contrast than the one at which they enter suppression (ramping down). But about the latter, I worry that the RT estimate of 200 ms may be on the low side. 200 ms may be reasonable for a prepared observer to give a speeded response to a clearly supra-threshold target, but that is not the type of task observers are performing here. One estimate of RT in a somewhat traditional perceptual bistability task is closer to 500 ms (Van Dam & Van Ee, Vis Res 45 2005), but I am uncertain what a good guess is here. Bottom line: can the effect of contrast ramping rate on 'suppression depth' be explained by RT if we use a longer but still reasonable estimated RT than 200 ms?

A second remark about the 'ramping rate' experiment: if we assume that perceptual switches occur with a certain non-zero probability per unit time (stochastically) at various contrasts along the ramp, then giving the percept more time to switch during the ramping process will lead to more switches happening at an earlier stage along the ramp. So: ramping contrast upward more slowly would lead to more switches at relatively low contrast, and ramping contrast downward more slowly would lead to more switches at relatively high contrasts. This assumption (that the probability of switching is non-zero at various contrasts along the ramp) seems entirely warranted. To what extent can that type of consideration explain the result of the 'ramping rate' experiment?

When tying the 'dampened harmonic oscillator' finding to dynamic systems, one potential concern is that the authors are seeing the dampened oscillating pattern when plotting a very specific thing: the amount of contrast change that happened between two consecutive perceptual switches, in a procedure where contrast change direction reversed after each switch. The pattern is not observed, for instance, in a plot of neural activity over time, threshold settings over time, etcetera. I find it hard to assess what the observation of this pattern when representing a rather unique aspect of the data in such a specific way, has to do with prior observations of such patterns in plots with completely different axes.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This study aims to provide a generalizable definition of retinal amacrine cell function in visual processing. The authors used larval tiger salamander retinas and white noise stimulus to measure the retinal ganglion cell responses with multielectrode array recording, while either measuring individual amacrine cell membrane potential or stimulating the amacrine cell by injecting white noise currents using a sharp electrode. Modulatory effects of an amacrine cell on ganglion cells are analyzed by a computational framework that parses the signaling processing underlying ganglion cell responses into multiple conceptual pathways that are differentially subject to the amacrine cell signaling. The authors conclude that an individual amacrine cell can have diverse modulatory effects on ganglion cell responses. One class of effects modulates the sensitivity of the ganglion cell to specific visual features, while the other class of effects modulates the gain of responses to all features.

Amacrine cells are known for their remarkable cell type diversity and serve as key players underlying the complexity of computations performed by the vertebrate retina. However, their functions largely remain a mystery except for a few better-studied cell types. Therefore, the topic of this study is important. Furthermore, the study aims to extract general computational functions from these neurons, which will have broader applications to sensory processing beyond the retina. My main questions are centered around the interpretation of the computational analysis. First of all, the definition of a "visual feature" in this study using the white noise stimulus is different from that used in many other retinal studies using more structured stimuli than white noise. In this study, a major finding is that amacrine cells can control the sensitivity of specific visual features of the ganglion cell. However, it is difficult to gain intuition about how such feature specificity is related to the processing of other artificial and natural stimuli. More discussion along this line will help to clarify the significance of this result.

Another concern is the assumption that the somatic membrane potential of the amacrine cell represents its transmission property to ganglion cells. There are compelling examples that amacrine cells often exhibit local response properties that dramatically differ across the dendritic arbor and the soma (e.g. AIIs, Vlgut3+ ACs, starburst amacrine cells, A17s). This potential (and likely) complication should be addressed.

The dataset in this study is from 8 sustained and 3 transient amacrine cells. Immediate questions are: do all sustained or all transient cells belong to the same cell type in terms of functional properties or morphology? Is there any difference in the modulatory effects between the sustained and transient groups?

There is a rich body of literature on the functions of various amacrine cell types in the mammalian retina in shaping the receptive field properties, gain, and sensitivity of retinal ganglion cells. It would help the reader if the novelty of the current study is adequately discussed in the context of previous work.

Technical:<br /> One concern of sharp electrode recordings is the dialysis of intracellular solution into the cytoplasm, causing changes in membrane properties over time (e.g. Hooper et al., 2015). Have the authors examined the data obtained at the earlier and later phases of the recording to assess the potential effect of dialysis?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this manuscript, Salazar-Lázaro et al. presented interesting data that C-terminal half of the Syx1 SNARE domain is responsible for clamping of spontaneous release, stabilizing RRP, and also Ca2+-evoked release. The authors routinely utilized the chimeric approach to replace the SNARE domain of Syx1 with its paralogue Syx2 and analyzed the neuronal activity through electrophysiology. The data are straightforward and fruitful. The conclusions are partly reasonable.

Strengths:<br /> The electrophysiology data that illustrate the important functions of Syx1 in clamping of spontaneous release, stabilizing RRP, and Ca2+-evoked release were clear and convincing.

Weaknesses:<br /> One obvious weakness is that the authors did not explore the underlying mechanism. I think it is easy for the authors to carry out some simple assays to verify their hypothesis for the mechanism, instead of just talking about it in the discussion section.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This is an interesting paper investigating fMRI changes during sensory (visual, tactile) stimulation and absence seizures in the GAERS model. The results are potentially important for the field and do suggest that sensory stimulation may not activate brain regions normally during absence seizures. However the findings are limited by substantial methodological issues that do not enable fMRI signals related to absence seizures to be fully disentangled from fMRI signals related to the sensory stimuli.

Strengths:<br /> Investigating fMRI brain responses to sensory stimuli during absence seizures in an animal model is a novel approach with the potential to yield important insights.

The use of an awake, habituated model is a valid and potentially powerful approach.

Weaknesses:<br /> The major difficulty with interpreting the results of this study is that the duration of the visual and auditory stimuli was 6 seconds, which is very close to the mean seizure duration per Table 1. Therefore the HRF model looking at fMRI responses to visual or auditory stimuli occurring during seizures was simultaneously weighting both seizure activity and the sensory (visual or auditory) stimuli over the same time intervals on average. The resulting maps and time courses claiming to show fMRI changes from visual or auditory stimulation during seizures will therefore in reality contain some mix of both sensory stimulation-related signals and seizure-related signals. The main claim that the sensory stimuli do not elicit the same activations during seizures as they do in the interictal period may still be true. However the attempts to localize these differences in space or time will be contaminated by the seizure-related signals.

The claims that differences were observed for example between visual cortex and superior colliculus signals with visual stim during seizures vs. interictal are unconvincing due to the above.

The maps shown in Figure 3 do not show clear changes in the areas claimed to be involved.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The study uses structural MRI to identify how the number, degree of experience, and phonemic diversity of language(s) that a speaker knows can influence the thickness of different sub-segments of the auditory cortex. In both a primary and replication sample of adult speakers, the authors find key differences in cortical thickness within specific subregions of the cortex due to either the age at which languages are acquired (degree of experience), or the diversity of the phoneme inventories carried by that/those language(s) (breadth of experience).

Strengths:<br /> The results are first and foremost quite fascinating and I do think they make a compelling case for the different ways in which linguistic experience shapes the auditory cortex.

The study uses a number of different measures to quantify linguistic experience, related to how many languages a person knows (taking into account the age at which each was learned) as well as the diversity of the phoneme inventories contained within those languages. The primary sample is moderately large for a study that focuses on brain-behaviour relationships; a somewhat smaller replication sample is also deployed in order to test the generality of the effects.

Analytic approaches benefit from the careful use of brain segmentation techniques that nicely capture key landmarks and account for vagaries in the structure of STG that can vary across individuals (e.g., the number of transverse temporal gyri varies from 1-4 across individuals).

Weaknesses:<br /> The specificity of these effects is interesting; some effects really do appear to be localized to the left hemisphere and specific subregions of the auditory cortex e.g., TTG. However because analyses only focus on auditory regions along the STG and MTG, one could be led to the conclusion that these are the only brain regions for which such effects will occur. The hypothesis is that these are specifically auditory effects, but that does make a clear prediction that non-auditory regions should not show the same sort of variability. I recognize that expanding the search space will inflate type-1 errors to a point where maybe it's impossible to know what effects are genuine. And the fine-grained nature of the effects suggests a coarse analysis of other cortical regions is likely to fail. So I don't know the right answer here. Only that I tend to wonder if some control region(s) might have been useful for understanding whether such effects truly are limited to the auditory cortex. Otherwise one might argue these are epiphenomenal or some hidden factor unrelated to auditory experience predicting that we'd also see them in the non-auditory cortex as well, either within or outside the brain's speech network(s).

The reason(s) why we might find a link between cortical thickness and experience is not fully discussed. The introduction doesn't really mention why we'd expect cortical thickness to be correlated (positively or negatively) with speech experience. There is some discussion of it in the Discussion section as it relates to the Pliatsikas' Dynamic Restructuring Model, though I think that model only directly predicts thinning as a function of experience (here, negative correlations). It might have less to say about observed positive correlations e.g., HG in the right hemisphere. In any case, I do think that it's interesting to find some relationship between brain morphology and experience but clearer explanations for why these occur could help, and especially some mention of it in the intro so readers are clearer on why cortical thickness is a useful measure.

One pitfall of quantifying phoneme overlap across languages is that what we might call a single 'phoneme', shared across languages, will, in reality, be realized differently across them. For instance, English and French may be argued to both use the vowel /u/ although it's realized differently in English vs. French (it's often fronted and diphthongized in many English speaker groups). Maybe the phonetic dictionaries used in this study capture this using a close phonetic transcription, but it's hard to tell; I suspect they don't, and in that case, the diversity measures would be an underestimate of the actual number of unique phonemes that a listener needs to maintain.

Discussion of potential genetic differences underlying the findings is interesting. One additional data point here is a study finding a relationship between the number of repeats of the READ1 (a factor of the DCDC2 gene) in populations of speakers, and the phoneme inventory of language(s) predominant in that population (DeMille, M. M., Tang, K., Mehta, C. M., Geissler, C., Malins, J. G., Powers, N. R., ... & Gruen, J. R. (2018). Worldwide distribution of the DCDC2 READ1 regulatory element and its relationship with phoneme variation across languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(19), 4951-4956.) Admittedly, that paper makes no claim about the cortical expression of that regulatory factor under study, and so more work needs to be done on whether this has any bearing at all on the auditory cortex. But it does represent one alternative account that does not have to do with plasticity/experience.

The replication sample is useful and a great idea. It does however feature roughly half the number of participants meaning statistical power is weaker. Using information from the first sample, the authors might wish to do a post-hoc power analysis that shows the minimum sample size needed to replicate their effect; given small effects in some cases, we might not be surprised that the replication was only partial. I don't think this is a deal breaker as much as it's a way to better understand whether the failure to replicate is an issue of power versus fragile effects.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors generate and characterize two phosphospecific antisera for FFA2 receptor and claim a "bar code" difference between white fat and Peyers patches.

Strengths:<br /> The question is interesting and the antibody characterization is convincing.

Weaknesses:<br /> The mass spectrometry analysis is not convincing because the method is not quantitative (no SILAC, TMT, internal standards etc). Figure 1 shows single tryptic peptides with one and two phosphorylation fragmentations as claimed, but there is no data testing the abundance of these so the differences claimed between cell treatment conditions are not established.

The blot analysis cannot distinguish 296/7 but it does convincingly show an agonist increase. Can the authors clarify why the amount of constitutive phosphorylation is much higher in the example blot in Figure 2 than in Figure 3? It would be helpful to quantify this across more than one example, like in Figures 4 and 5 for tissue.

Compound 101 is shown in Figure 2 to block barrestin recruitment. I agree this suggests phosphorylation mediated by GRK2/3 but this is not tested. The new antibodies should be good for this so I don't understand why the indirect approach.

The conditions used to inhibit dephosphorylation are not specified, the method only says "phosphatase inhibitors". How do the authors know that low P at 306/7 in white fat is not a result of dephosphorylation during sample preparation? If these sites are GRK2/3 dependent (see above) then does adipose tissue lack this GRK?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

Despite being preventable and treatable, cervical cancer remains the second most common cause of cancer death globally. This cancer, and associated deaths, occur overwhelmingly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), reflecting a lack of access to vaccination, screening and treatment services. Cervical screening is the second pillar in the WHO strategy to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem and will be critical in delivering early gains in cervical cancer prevention as the impact of vaccination will not be realized for several decades. However, screening strategies implemented in high income countries are not feasible or affordable in LMICs. This ambitious multi-center study aims to address these issues by developing and systematically evaluating a novel approach to cervical screening. The approach, based on primary screening with self-collected specimens for HPV testing, is focused on optimizing triage of people in whom HPV is detected, so that sensitivity for the detection of pre-cancer and cancer is maximized while treatment of people without pre-cancer or cancer is minimized.

Strengths:

The triage proposed for this study builds on the authors' previously published work in designing the ScreenFire test to appropriately group the 13 detected genotypes into four channels and to develop automated visual evaluation (AVE) of images of the cervix, taken by health workers.

The move from mobile telephone devices to a dedicated device to acquire and evaluate images overcomes challenges previously encountered whereby updates of mobile phone models required retraining of the AVE algorithm.

The separation of the study into two phases, an efficacy phase in which screen positive people will be triaged and treated according to local standard of care and the performance of AVE will be evaluated against biopsy outcomes will be followed by the second phase in which the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability will be evaluated.

The setting in a range of low resource settings which are geographically well spread and reflective of where the global cancer burden is highest.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This work contributes to the literature characterizing early and late waves of transcription and associated chromatin remodeling following neuronal depolarization, here in cultured embryonic striatum. While they find IEG transcription 1 h after depolarization, they find chromatin remodeling is slower (opening at the 4 h time point). While this is not the first paper to describe chromatin changes in response to neuronal activity, this paper ties previous findings all together in one place using novel sequencing analyses and visualizations. Previous work has found remodeling occurring at the 1 h time point, so the lack of differences at that early time point in the current study needs to be better understood and the "temporal decoupling" described by authors should be further explored. Differences may be due to chromatin at IEG regulatory regions already being open in embryonic tissue (here) vs generally more closed in adult tissue (previous), or due to previous studies using protocols to specifically silence neurons prior to activation. The authors next show that the chromatin remodeling that occurs at the late (4 h) stage is largely in putative regulatory regions of the genome (rather than gene bodies), and is dependent on translation, which validates and extends the prior literature. The authors then transition from genome-wide basic neuroscience to focus on a specific gene of interest, prodynorphin (Pdyn), and a putative enhancer they identify from their chromatin analysis. They target CRISPR-activating and -inhibiting complexes to the putative enhancer and demonstrate that accessibility of this locus is necessary and sufficient for Pdyn transcription. They then show that at least one PDYN enhancer is conserved from rodents to humans, and is only activity-regulated in human GABAergic but not glutamatergic neurons. Finally, the authors generate snATAC-seq and show Pdyn gene and enhancer activity is also cell-type-specific in rat striatum. The Pdyn work, in particular, is thorough and novel, and demonstrates a translational aspect of this work.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this work, the authors co-opt the RRM-binding protein Musashi-1 to act as a translational repressor. The novelty of the work is in the adoption of the allosteric RRM protein Musashi-1 into a translational reporter and the demonstration that RRM proteins, which are ubiquitous in eukaryotic systems, but rare in prokaryotic ones, may act effectively as post-translational regulators in E. coli. The extent of repression achieved by the best design presented in this work is not substantially improved compared to other synthetic regulatory schemes developed for E. coli, even those that similarly regulate translation (eg. native PP7 repression is approximately 10-fold, Lim et al. J. Biol. Chem. 2001 276:22507-22513). Furthermore, the mechanism of regulation is not established due to missing key experiments. The work would be of broader interest if the allosteric properties of Musashi-1 were more effective in the context of regulation. Unfortunately, the authors do not demonstrate that fatty acids can completely de-repress expression in the experimental system used for most of their assays, nor do they use this ability in their provided application (NIMPLY gate).

Strengths:<br /> The first major achievement of this work is the demonstration that a eukaryotic RRM protein may be used to post-transcriptionally regulate expression in bacteria. In my limited literature search, this appears to be the first engineering attempt to design an RBP to directly regulate translation in E. coli, although engineered control of translation via other approaches including alterations to RNA structure or via trans-acting sRNAs have been previously described (for review see Vigar and Wieden Biochim Biophys. Acta Gen. Subj. 2017, 1861:3060-3069). Additionally, several viral systems (e.g. MS2 and PP7) have been directly co-opted to work in a similar fashion in the past (utilized recently in Nguyen et al. ACS Synthetic Biol 2022, 11:1710-1718).

The second achievement of this work is the demonstration that the allosteric regulation of Musashi-1 binding can be utilized to modulate the regulatory activity. However, the liquid culture demonstration (Suppl. Fig 8) shows that this is not a very effective switch, with de-repressed reporter activity showing substantial change but not approaching un-repressed activity. This effect is stronger when colonies are grown on a solid medium (Fig. 5).

Weaknesses:<br /> In this work, the authors codon optimize the mouse Musashi-1 coding sequence for expression in E. coli and demonstrate using an sfGFP reporter that an engineered Musashi-1 binding site near the translational start site is sufficient to enable a modest reduction in reporter gene expression. The authors postulate that the reduction in expression due to inhibition of ribosome translocation along the transcript (lines 134/135), as an expression of a control transcript (mScarlet) driven by the same promoter (Plac) but without the Musashi-1 recognition site does not demonstrate the same repression. However, the situation could be more complex. Other possibilities include inhibition of translation initiation rather than elongation, as well as accelerated mRNA decay of transcripts that are not actively translated. The authors do not present any measurements of sfGFP mRNA levels.

In subsequent sections of the work, the authors create a series of point mutations to assess RNA-protein binding and assess these via both a sfGFP reporter and in vitro binding assays (switchSENSE). Ultimately, it is difficult to fully rationalize and interpret the behavior of these mutants in the context provided. The authors do identify a relationship between equilibrium constant (1/KD) and fold-repression. However, it is not clear from the narrative why this relationship should exist. Fold-repression is one measure of regulator efficacy, but it is an indirect measure determined from unrepressed and repressed expression. It is not clear why unrepressed expression (in the absence of the protein) is expected to be a function of the equilibrium constant.

Subsequent rational redesign of the Musashi-1 binding sequence to produce three alternative designs shows that fold-repression may be improved to approximately 8.6-fold. However, the rationalization of why the best design (red3) achieves this increase based on either the extensive modelling or in vitro measured binding constants is not well articulated. Furthermore, this extent of regulation is approximately that which can be achieved from the PP7 system with its native components (Lim et al. J. Biol. Chem. 2001 276:22507-22513).

The application provided for this regulator (NIMPLY gate), is not an inherently novel regulatory paradigm, and it does not capitalize on the allosteric properties of Musashi-1, but rather treats Musashi-1 as a non-allosteric component of a regulatory circuit.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In the face of emerging antibiotic resistance and slow pace of drug discovery, strategies that can enhance the efficacy of existing clinically used antibiotics are highly sought after. In this manuscript, through genetic manipulation of a model bacterium (Escherichia coli) and clinically isolated and antibiotic resistant strains of concern (Pseudomonas, Burkholderia, Stenotrophomonas), an additional drug target to combat resistance and potentiate existing drugs is put forward. These observations were validated in both pure cultures, mixed bacterial cultures and in worm models. The drug target investigated in this study appears to be broadly relevant to the challenge posed by lactamases enzyme that render lactam antibiotics ineffective in the clinic. The compounds that target this enzyme are being developed already, some of which were tested in this study displaying promising results and potential for further optimization by medicinal chemists.

Strengths:<br /> The work is well designed and well executed and targets an urgent area of research with the unprecedented increase in antibiotic resistance.

Weaknesses:<br /> The impact of the work can be strengthened by demonstrating increased efficacy of antibiotics in mice models or wound models for Pseudomonas infections. Worm models are relevant, but still distant from investigations in animal models.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: The paper aims to investigate the relationship between anti-S protein antibody titers with the phenotypes&clonotypes of S-protein-specific T cells, in people who receive SARS-CoV2 mRNA vaccines. To do this, the paper recruited a cohort of Covid-19 naive individuals who received the SARS-CoV2 mRNA vaccines and collected sera and PBMCs samples at different timepoints. Then they mainly generate three sets of data: 1). Anti-S protein antibody titers on all timepoints. 2) Single-cell RNAseq/TCRseq dataset for divided T cells after stimulation by S-protein for 10 days. 3) Corresponding epitopes for each expanded TCR clones. After analyzing these results, the paper reports two major findings & claims: A) Individuals having sustained anti-S protein antibody response also have more so-called Tfh cells in their single-cell dataset, which suggests Tfh-polarization of S-specific T cells can be a marker to predict the longevity of anti-S antibody. B). S-reactive T cells do exist before the vaccination, but they seem to be unable to respond to Covid-19 vaccination properly.

The paper's strength is it uses a very systemic and thorough strategy trying to dissect the relationship between antibody titers, T cell phenotypes, TCR clonotypes and corresponding epitopes, and indeed it reports several interesting findings about the relationship of Tfh/sustained antibody and about the S-reactive clones that exist before the vaccination. However, the main weakness is these interesting claims are not sufficiently supported by the evidence presented in this paper. I have the following major concerns:

1) The biggest claim of the paper, which is the acquisition of S-specific Tfh clonotypes is associated with the longevity of anti-S antibodies, should be based on proper statistical analysis rather than just a UMAP as in Fig2 C, E, F. The paper only shows the pooled result, but it looks like most of the so-called Tfh cells come from a single donor #27. If separating each of the 4 decliners and sustainers and presenting their Tfh% in total CD4+ T cells respectively, will it statistically have a significant difference between those decliners and sustainers? I want to emphasize that solid scientific conclusions need to be drawn based on proper sample size and statistical analysis.

2) The paper does not provide any information to justify its cell annotation as presented in Fig 2B, 4A. Moreover, in my opinion, it is strange to see that there are two clusters of cells sit on both the left and right side of UMAP in Fig2B but both are annotated as CD4 Tcm and Tem. Also Tfh and Treg belong to a same cluster in Fig 2B but they should have very distinct transcriptomes and should be separated nicely. Therefore I believe the paper can be more convincing if it can present more information and discussion about the basis for its cell annotation.

3) Line 103-104, the paper claims that the Tfh cluster likely comes from cTfh cells. However considering the cells have been cultured/stimulated for 10 days, cTfh cells might lose all Tfh features after such culture. To my best knowledge there is no literature to support the notion that cTfh cells after stimulated in vitro for 10 days (also in the presence of IL2, IL7 and IL15), can still retain a Tfh phenotype after 10 days. It is possible that what actually happens is, instead of having more S-specific cTfh cells before the cell culture, the sustainers' PBMC can create an environment that favors the Tfh cell differentiation (such as express more pro-Tfh cytokines/co-stimulations). Thus after 10-days culture, there are more Tfh-like cells detected in the sustainers. The paper may need to include more evidence to support cTfh cells can retain Tfh features after 10-days' culture.

4) It is in my opinion inaccurate to use cell number in Fig4B to determine whether such clone expands or not, given that the cell number can be affected by many factors like the input number, the stimulation quality and the PBMC sample quality. A more proper analysis should be considered by calculating the relative abundance of each TCR clone in total CD4 T cells in each timepoint.

5) It is well-appreciated to express each TCR in cell line and to determine the epitopes. However, the author needs to make very sure that this analysis is performed correctly because a large body of conclusions of the paper are based on such epitope analysis. However, I notice something strange (maybe I am wrong) but for example, Table 4 donor #8 clonotype post_6 and _7, these two clonotypes have exactly the same TRAV5 and TRAJ5 usage. Because alpha chain don't have a D region, in theory these clonotypes, if have the same VJ usage, they should have the same alpha chain CDR3 sequences, however, in the table they have very different CDR3α aa sequences. I wish the author could double check their analysis and I apologize in advance if I raise such questions based on wrong knowledge.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors aim to solve how landscape context impacts the community BEF relationship. They found habitat loss and fragmentation per se have inconsistent effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function. Habitat loss rather than fragmentation per se can weaken the positive BEF relationship by decreasing the degree of habitat specialization of the community.

Strengths:<br /> The authors provide a good background, and they have a good grasp of habitat fragmentation and BEF literature. A major strength of this study is separating the impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation per se using the convincing design selection of landscapes with different combinations of habitat amount and fragmentation per se. Another strength is considering the role of specialists and generalists in shaping the BEF relationship.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The authors used five fragmentation metrics in their study. However, the choice of these fragmentation metrics was not well justified. The ecological significance of each fragmentation metric needs to be differentiated clearly. Also, these fragmentation metrics may be highly correlated with each other and redundant. I suggest author test the collinearity of these fragmentation metrics for influencing biodiversity and ecosystem function.<br /> 2. I found the local environmental factors were not considered in the study. As the author mentioned in the manuscript, temperature and water also have important impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function in the natural ecosystem. I suggest authors include the environmental factors in the data analysis to control their potential impact, especially the structural equation model.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This study by Guan and co-workers focuses on a model neuronal lineage in the developing Drosophila nervous system, revealing interesting aspects about: a) the generation of supernumerary cells, later destined for apoptosis; and, b) new insights into the mechanisms that regulate this process. The two RNA-binding proteins, Imp and Syp, are shown to be expressed in temporally largely complementary patterns, their expression defining early vs later born neurons in this lineage, and thus also regulating the apoptotic elimination. Moreover, neuronal 'fate' transcription factors that are downstream of Imp and signatures of early-born neurons, can also be sufficient to convert later born cells to an earlier 'fate', including survival.

The authors provide solid evidence for most of their statements, including the temporal windows during which the early and the later-born motoneurons are generated by this model lineage, how this relates to patterns of cell death by apoptosis and that mis-expression of early-born transcription factors in later-born cells can be sufficient to block apoptosis (part of, and perhaps indicative of the late-born identity).

Other studies have previously outlined analogous, mutually antagonistic roles for Imp and Syp during nervous system development in Drosophila, in different parts and at different stages, with which the working model of this study aligns.

Overall, this study adds to and extends current working models and evidence on the developmental mechanisms that underlie temporal cell fate decisions.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Yuan et al., set out to examine the role of functional and structural interaction between Slack and NaVs on the Slack sensitivity to quinidine. Through pharmacological and genetic means they identify NaV1.6 as the privileged NaV isoform in sensitizing Slack to quinidine. Through biochemical assays, they then determine that the C-terminus of Slack physically interacts with the N- and C-termini of NaV1.6. Using the information gleaned from the in vitro experiments the authors then show that virally-mediated transduction of Slack's C-terminus lessens the extent of SlackG269S-induced seizures. These data uncover a previously unrecognized interaction between a sodium and a potassium channel, which contributes to the latter's sensitivity to quinidine.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, authors use the Drosophila wing as a model system and combine state-of-the-art genetic engineering to identify and validate the molecular players mediating the activity of one of the cis-regulatory enhancers of the apterous gene involved in the regulation of its expression domain in the dorsal compartment of the wing primordium during larval development.

(1) The authors raise two very important questions in the Introduction: (1) who is locating the relative position of the AP and DV boundaries in the developing wing, and (2) who is responsible for the maintenance of the apterous expression domain late in larval development. None of these two questions have been responded to and, indeed, the summary of the work (as stated in the conclusions of the last paragraph of the Introduction) does not resolve any of these questions.

(2) The authors have identified two different regions whose deletions give very interesting phenotypes in the adult wing (AP identify change & outgrowths, and loss of wing), and have bioinformatically identified and functionally verified 4 TFs that mediate the activity of these regions by their capacity to phenocopy the wing phenotype. While identification of the 2 TFs acting on the m1 is incremental with respect to previous work on the identification of the enhancer responsible for the early expression of Ap, identification of Antp and Grn does not explain the loss of function phenotype of the m3 enhancer. Does any of these results shed any light on the first two Qs? Do these results explain the compartment boundary position in the wing as stated in the title? Expression of lacZ reporter assays is fundamental to demonstrate their model of Figure 8. The reduction of the PD compartment is difficult to understand by the sole reduction in ap expression in this region (which has not been demonstrated).

(3) The authors state in one of the sections "Spatio-temporal analysis of apE via dCas9 ". No temporal manipulation of gene activity is shown. The authors should combine GAL4/UAs with the Gal80ts to demonstrate the temporal requirements of Antp/Grn and Pnt/Hth as depicted in their model of Figure 8.

(4) The authors have not managed to explain the AP phenotype. Thus, this work opens many unresolved questions and does not resolve the title, which is a big overstatement. Thus, strengths (technically excellent), weakness (there is not much to learn about wing development and apterous regulation from these results besides the incremental identification of 4 additional TFs mediating the regulation of ap expression by their ability to phenocopy regulatory mutations of the apterous gene).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: In this manuscript, Koh, Stratiievska, and their colleagues investigate the mechanism by which TRPV1 channels are delivered to the plasma membrane following the activation of receptor tyrosine kinases, specifically focusing on the NGF receptor. They demonstrate that the activation of the NGF receptor's PI3K pathway alone is sufficient to increase the levels of TRPV1 at the plasma membrane.

Strengths: The authors employ cutting-edge optogenetic, imaging, and chemical-biology techniques to achieve their research goals. They ingeniously use optogenetics to selectively activate the PI3K pathway without affecting other NGF pathways. Additionally, they develop a novel, membrane-impermeable fluorescent probe for labeling cell-surface proteins through click-chemistry.

Weaknesses: Previous research, including work by the authors themselves, has already established that PI3K activation is required for NGF-induced TRPV1 trafficking to the plasma membrane. Moreover, the paper suffers from issues such as subpar writing quality, a lack of statistical analysis, and insufficient control experiments, which dampen the reviewer's enthusiasm.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript by Flaherty III S.E. et al identified SPAG7 gene in their forward mutagenetic screening and created the germline knockout and inducible knockout mice. The authors reported that the SPAG7 germline knockout mice had lower birth weight likely due to intrauterine growth restriction and placental insufficiency. The SPAG7 KO mice later developed obesity phenotype as a result of reduced energy expenditure. However, the inducible SPAG7 knockout mice had normal body weight and composition.

Strengths:<br /> In this reviewer's opinion, this study has high significance in the field of metabolic research for the following reasons.<br /> (1) The authors' findings are significant in the field of obesity research, especially from the perspective of maternal-fetal medicine. The authors created and analyzed the SPAG7 KO mice and found that the KO mice had a "thrifty phenotype" and developed obesity.<br /> (2) SPAG7 gene function hasn't been thoroughly studied. The reported phenotype will fill the gap of knowledge.<br /> Overall, the authors have presented their results in a clear and logically organized structure, clearly stated the key question to be addressed, used the appropriate methodology, produced significant and innovative main findings.

Weaknesses:<br /> The manuscript can be further strengthened with more clarification on the following points.<br /> 1. The germline whole-body KO mice were female mice (Line293), however the inducible knockout mice were male mice (Line549). Sexual dimorphism is often observed in metabolic studies, therefore the metabolic phenotype of both female and male mice needs to be reported for the germline and inducible knockouts in order to make the justified conclusion.<br /> 2. SPAG7 has an NLS. Does this protein function in gene expression? Whether the overall metabolic phenotype is the direct cause of SPAG7 ablation is unclear. For example, the Hsd17b10 gene was downregulated in all tissues in the KO mice. Could this have been coincidentally selected for and thus be the cause of the developmental issues and adulthood obesity? Do the iSpag7 mice demonstrate reduced expression of Hsd17b10?<br /> 3. Figure 2c should display the energy expenditure normalized to body weight (or lean body mass).<br /> 4. Please provide more information for the figure legend, including the statistical test that was conducted for each data set, animal numbers for each genotype and sexes.<br /> 5. The authors should report how long after treatment the data was collected for figures 4F-M.<br /> 6. The authors should justify ending the data collection after 8 weeks for the iSPAG7 mice in Figures 4C-E. In the WT vs germline KO mice, there was no clear difference in body weight or lean mass at 15 weeks of age.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

Single-unit neural activity tuned to environmental or behavioral variables gradually changes over time. This phenomenon, called representational drift, occurs even when all external variables remain constant, and challenges the idea that stable neural activity supports the performance of well-learned behaviors. While a number of studies have described representational drift across multiple brain regions, our understanding of the underlying mechanism driving drift is limited. Ratzon et al. propose that implicit regularization - which occurs when machine learning networks continue to reconfigure after reaching an optimal solution - could provide insights into why and how drift occurs in neurons. To test this theory, Ratzon et al. trained a Feedforward Network to perform the oft-utilized linear track behavioral paradigm and compare the changes in hidden layer units to those observed in hippocampal place cells recorded in awake, behaving animals.

Ratzon et al. clearly demonstrate that hidden layer units in their model undergo consistent changes even after the task is well-learned, mirroring representational drift observed in real hippocampal neurons. They show that the drift occurs across three separate measures: the active proportion of units (referred to as sparsification), spatial information of units, and correlation of spatial activity. They continue to address the conditions and parameters under which drift occurs in their model to assess the generalizability of their findings. However, the generalizability results are presented primarily in written form: additional figures are warranted to aid in reproducibility. Last, they investigate the mechanism through which sparsification occurs, showing that the flatness of the manifold near the solution can influence how the network reconfigures. The authors suggest that their findings indicate a three-stage learning process: 1) fast initial learning followed by 2) directed motion along a manifold which transitions to 3) undirected motion along a manifold.

Overall, the authors' results support the main conclusion that implicit regularization in machine learning networks mirrors representational drift observed in hippocampal place cells. However, additional figures/analyses are needed to clearly demonstrate how different parameters used in their model qualitatively and quantitatively influence drift. Finally, the authors need to clearly identify how their data supports the three-stage learning model they suggest. Their findings promise to open new fields of inquiry into the connection between machine learning and representational drift and generate testable predictions for neural data.

Strengths:

1) Ratzon et al. make an insightful connection between well-known phenomena in two separate fields: implicit regularization in machine learning and representational drift in the brain. They demonstrate that changes in a Feedforward Network mirror those observed in the brain, which opens a number of interesting questions for future investigation.

2) The authors do an admirable job of writing to a large audience and make efforts to provide examples to make machine learning ideas accessible to a neuroscience audience and vice versa. This is no small feat and aids in broadening the impact of their work.

3) This paper promises to generate testable hypotheses to examine in real neural data, e.g., that drift rate should plateau over long timescales (now testable with the ability to track single-unit neural activity across long time scales with calcium imaging and flexible silicon probes). Additionally, it provides another set of tools for the neuroscience community at large to use when analyzing the increasingly high-dimensional data sets collected today.

Weaknesses:

1) Neural representational drift and directed/undirected random walks along a manifold in ML are well described. However, outside of the first section of the main text, the analysis focuses primarily on the connection between manifold exploration and sparsification without addressing the other two drift metrics: spatial information and place field correlations. It is therefore unclear if the results from Figures 3 and 4 are specific to sparseness or extend to the other two metrics. For example, are these other metrics of drift also insensitive to most of the parameters as shown in Figure 3 and the related text? These concerns could be addressed with panels analogous to Figures 3a-c and 4b for the other metrics and will increase the reproducibility of this work.

2) Many caveats/exceptions to the generality of findings are mentioned only in the main text without any supporting figures, e.g., "For label noise, the dynamics were qualitatively different, the fraction of active units did not reduce, but the activity of the units did sparsify" (lines 116-117). Supporting figures are warranted to illustrate which findings are "qualitatively different" from the main model, which are not different from the main model, and which of the many parameters mentioned are important for reproducing the findings.

3) Key details of the model used by the authors are not listed in the methods. While they are mentioned in reference 30 (Recanatesi et al., 2021), they need to be explicitly defined in the methods section to ensure future reproducibility.

4) How different states of drift correspond to the three learning stages outlined by the authors is unclear. Specifically, it is not clear where the second stage ends, and the third stage begins, either in real neural data or in the figures. This is compounded by the fact that the third stage - of undirected, random manifold exploration - is only discussed in relation to the introductory Figure 1 and is never connected to the neural network data or actual brain data presented by the authors. Are both stages meant to represent drift? Or is only the second stage meant to mirror drift, while undirected random motion along a manifold is a prediction that could be tested in real neural data? Identifying where each stage occurs in Figures 2C and E, for example, would clearly illustrate which attributes of drift in hidden layer neurons and real hippocampal neurons correspond to each stage.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The authors claim that this dataset covers a timepoint of embryogenesis that is not well covered in the other published single cell datasets (Tintori et al 2016 and Packer et al 2019). The Tintori data indeed do not cover the 28-102-cell stages sufficiently, but it is unclear how the data presented here compare to the Packer et al data. It is true that the Packer et al data have fewer cells at earlier timepoints than at later ones, but given that they sequenced tens of thousands of cells, they report that they still have ~10,000 cells <210 min of embryogenesis. It seems that if the authors want to make any claims about how their data enables exploration of a stage that was previously not accessible, this would require a better comparison to the available data.

The authors provide thorough support for how they assigned cell identities in their data. It is surprising though that at the 102-cell stage they only identify 37 unique cell identities. They suggest that this is because there are many equivalence groups at this stage. However, I would strongly encourage the authors to perform a similar analysis or otherwise compare their obtained identities with the data from Packer et al. 2019. It seems possible that given the low number of cells in this dataset, the authors are missing certain identities and it would be important to know this.

The main analysis the authors perform is to look at expression patterns of various classes of TFs and ask whether they are enriched in particular lineages or at specific timepoints. This analysis is interesting but would be more informative if the authors provided in Figure 3d the numbers of each class of TFs. The authors then focus on the homeodomain class of TFs as they display interesting lineage-specific expression patterns, which when mapped on the embryo form stripes. The stripe pattern however is not that obvious, at least not as shown in Figure 4b. Perhaps separate embryo schematics showing the different TF expression patterns would show this more clearly. Moreover, given the relatively small number of cell identities found in this dataset (particularly at the 102-cell stage), a similar analysis using the Packer data would provide further support to these patterns. The localization of cells with shared expression patterns does show a stripe pattern at the 28-cell stage, but also not so clearly beyond this timepoint.

I am also unsure about the validity/value of the comparison of the stripes to Drosophila and the centrality of homeodomain TFs to anterior-posterior positional identity. First, it would be important to map other TFs, very likely there are several other TFs that correlate with positional identity. Also, even if the expression of the homeodomain TFs in C. elegans form stripes, there are still several cells within that stripe that do not express these TFs, it is thus unclear whether these TFs encode positional information or the identity of cells with different positions in the embryo.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This paper uses indirect immunofluorescence, superresolution fluorescence microscopy, and X-ChIP to demonstrate radial distribution profiles of all histone H1 somatic variants with the exception of histone H1.1. The results support earlier work from chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments that revealed biases for active versus repressed states of chromatin. The previous studies provided some support for the subtle sequence variation found primarily within the C-terminus of histone H1 variants conferred preferences in the type of DNA (e.g. methylated DNA) or chromatin-bound. The current study significantly strengthens that argument. Importantly, this was shown across multiple cell lines and reveals conserved properties of localization of histone H1 variants.

Strengths:<br /> The strength of the manuscript is the combined use of quantitative analysis of indirect immunofluorescence and X-ChIP. The results generally support the polar organization of the genome and a corresponding distribution of histone H1 variants that reflect this polar organization. AT-rich chromatin is positioned near the lamina and is found to be enriched in H1.2, H1.3, and H1.5. H1.4 and H1.X were more biased towards the GC-rich intranuclear chromatin.

There is emerging functional evidence for variant-specific properties to histone H1 subtypes. This work provides an important building block in understanding how different histone H1 variants may have specific functional consequences. The histone H1 variant that is most abundant in most cell types, H1.2, was found to decrease the area of the immunofluorescent slice that was chromatin-free when depleted, suggesting a more important role in global chromatin organization.

Weaknesses:<br /> While histone H1 variants may show biases in their distributions, it is unlikely that these are more than biases. That is, it is unlikely that specific H1 variants are unable to bind to nucleosomes in regions where they are depleted. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiments has demonstrated differences in binding affinity but the capacity to bind a range of chromatin structures, including highly acetylated chromatin, for histone H1 variants. Thus, it is critical in assessing this data to have accurate quantitative information on the relative abundance of the different histone variants amongst the cell lines tested here. The paper relies upon quantification by immunoblotting.

Another uncertainty in both the ChIP and immunofluorescence datasets is the accessibility of the epitope. This weakness is highlighted by the apparent loss of H1.2 and H1.4 in mitotic chromosomes which is revealed to be false by the detection of the phosphorylated species. The distributions relative to the surface of chromosomes in mitosis and the depletion of H1.2, H1.3, and H1.5 from the central regions of interphase nuclei reveal an unusual dissipation of the staining that is suggestive of antibody accessibility or potentially overstaining and quenching of the fluorescence in the center of highly stained structures. The overall image quality of the immunofluorescence images is poor.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Sun et al. reveals several crystal structures that help underpin the offensive-defensive relationship between the sea slug Aplysia kurodai and algae. These centre on TNA (a algal glycosyl hydrolase inhibitor), EHEP (a slug protein that protects against TNA and like compounds) and BGL (a glycosyl hydrolase that helps digest algae). The hypotheses generated from the crystal structures herein are supported by biochemical assays.

The crystal structures of apo and TNA-bound EHEP reveals the binding (and thus protection) mechanism. The authors then demonstrate that the precipitated EHEP-TNA complex can be resolubilised at an alkaline pH, potentially highlighting a mechanism for EHEP recycling in the A. kurodai midgut. The authors also present the crystal structures of akuBGL, a beta-glucosidase utilised by Aplysia kurodai to digest laminarin in algae into glucose. The structure revealed that akuBGL is composed of two GH1 domains, with only one GH1 domain having the necessary residue arrangement for catalytic activity, which was confirmed via hydrolytic activity assays. Docking was used to assess binding of the substrate laminaritetraose and the inhibitors TNA, eckol and phloroglucinol to akuBGL. The docking studies revealed that the inhibitors bound akuBGL at the glycone-binding suggesting a competitive inhibition mechanism. Overall, most of the claims made in this work are supported by the data presented.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, the authors report that human cortical radial glia asymmetrically segregates newly produced or old centrosomes after mitosis, depending on the fate of the daughter cell, similar to what was previously demonstrated for mouse neocortical radial glia (Wang et al. 2009). To do this, the authors develop a novel centrosome labelling strategy in human ESCs that allows recombination-dependent switching of tagged fluorescent reporters from old to newly produced centrosome protein, centriolin. The authors then generate human cortical organoids from these hESCs to show that radial glia in the ventricular zone retains older centrosomes whereas differentiated cells, i.e. neurons, inherit the newly produced centrosome after mitosis. The authors then knock down a critical regulator of asymmetric centrosome inheritance called Ninein, which leads to a randomization of this process, similar to what was observed in mouse cortical radial glia.

A major strength of the study is the combined use of the centrosome labelling strategy with human cortical organoids to address an important biological question in human tissue. This study is similarly presented as the one performed in mice (Wang et al. 2009) and the existence of the asymmetric inheritance mechanism of centrosomes in another species grants strength to the main claim proposed by the authors. It is a well-written, concise article, and the experiments are well-designed. The authors achieve the aims they set out in the beginning, and this is one of the perfect examples of the right use of human cortical organoids to study an important phenomenon. However, there are some key controls that would elevate the main conclusions considerably.

1) The lack of clonal resolution or timelapse imaging makes it hard to assess whether the inheritance of centrosomes occurs as the authors claim. The authors show that there is an increase in newly made non-ventricular centrosomes at a population level but without labelling clones and demonstrating that a new or old centrosome is inherited asymmetrically in a dividing radial glia would grant additional credence to the central conclusion of the paper. These experiments will put away any doubt about the existence of this mechanism in human radial glia, especially if it is demonstrated using timelapse imaging. Additionally, knowing the proportions of symmetric vs asymmetrically dividing cells generating old/new centrosomes will provide important insights pertinent to the conclusions of the paper. Alternatively, the authors could soften their conclusions, especially for Fig 2.<br /> 2) Some critical controls are missing. In Fig. 1B, there is a green dot that does not colocalize with Pericentrin. This is worrying and providing rigorous quantifications of the number of green and tdTom dots with Pericentrin would be very helpful to validate the labelling strategy. Quantifications would put these doubts to rest. Additionally, an example pericentrin staining with the GFP/TdTom signal in figure 4 would also give confidence to the reader. For figure 4, having a control for the retroviral infection is important. Although the authors show a convincing phenotype, the effect might be underestimated due to the incomplete infection of all the analyzed cells.<br /> 3) It would be helpful if the authors expand on the presence of old centrosomes in apical radial glia vs outer radial glia. Currently, in figure 3, the authors only focus on Sox2+ cells but this could be complemented with the inclusion of markers for outer radial glia and whether older centrosomes are also inherited by oRGCs. This would have important implications on whether symmetric/asymmetric division influences the segregation of new/old centrosomes.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is a heterogenous, clonal hematopoietic stem cell disorder characterized by morphological dysplasia in one or more hematopoietic lineages, cytopenias (most frequently anemia), and ineffective hematopoiesis. In patients with MDS, transfusion therapy treatment causes clinical iron overload; however it has been unclear if treatment with iron chelation yields clinical benefits. In the present study, the authors use a transgenic mouse model of MDS, NUP98-HOXD13 (referred to here as "MDS mice") to investigate this area. Starting at 5 months of age (before MDS mice progress to acute leukemia), the authors administered DFP in the drinking water for 4 weeks, and compared parameters to untreated MDS mice and WT controls.

The authors first show that MDS mice exhibit systemic iron overload and macrocytic anemia that is improved by treatment with the iron chelator deferiprone (DFP). They then perform a detailed characterization the effects of DFP treatment on erythroid differentiation and various parameters related to iron transport and trafficking in MDS erythroblasts. Strengths of the work are the use of a well-characterized mouse model of MDS with appropriate animal group sizes and detailed analyses of systemic iron parameters and erythroid subpopulations. A remediable weakness is that in certain areas of the Results and Discussion, the authors overinterpret their findings by inferring causation when they have only shown a correlation. Additionally, when drawing conclusions based on changes in erythroblast mRNA expression levels between groups, the authors should consider that translation efficiency may be altered in MDS and that the NUP98 fusion protein itself, by acting as a chimeric transcription factor, may also impact gene expression profiles. Given that the application of chelators for treatment of MDS remains controversial, this work will be of interest to scientists focused on erythroid maturation and iron dysregulation in MDS, as well as clinicians caring for patients with this disorder.

Major Comments

1. The authors define the stages of erythroblast differentiation using the CD44-FSC method, which assumes that CD44 expression levels during the stages of erythroid differentiation are not altered by MDS itself. Are morphologically abnormal erythroblasts, such as bi-nucleate forms, captured in this analysis, and if so, are they classified in the appropriate subset? The percentage of erythroblasts in the bone marrow of MDS mice in this current study is lower than that reported by Suragani et al (Nat Med 2014), who employed a different strategy to define erythroid precursors. While representative erythroblast gating is presented as Supplemental Figure 17, it would be important to present representative gating from all 3 animal groups: WT, MDS, and MDS+DFP mice.

2. Methods, "Statistical analysis." The authors state that all comparisons were done with 2-tailed student paired t test, which would not be appropriate for comparisons being made between independent animals groups (i.e. when groups are not "paired").

3. The Results (p.7) indicates that both sexes showed similar responses to DFP; however, the figure legends do not indicate sex. Given that systemic iron metabolism in mice shows sex-related differences, sex should be specified.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Rhombomeres are key organizational structures for building cell type and even functional diversity in the brainstem. How these rhombmeres ultimately arise from a broad neuro-epithilium remains unclear. While genetic, cellular, tissue, and morphogen manipulations have revealed key processes in rhombomere development the hierarchical organization of neuron-epithelium into individual rhombomeres was less well understood. For example it is thought that rhombomeres are organized in an even odd fashion where two base identities i.e. even or odd where laminated with paired identifies i.e. rhombomeres 1 and 2 being paired and so on. However, there are many exceptions to these organizing constructs at the gene expression levels.

To further interrogate early development of the hindbrain neuro-epithelium and gain insight as to how rhombomere identities emerge at the earliest stages, Kim et al used ATACseq and RNAseq to query chromatin landscapes and gene expression for single nuclei at different developmental stages of zebrafish hindbrain development. The goal of the two pronged approach termed scMultiome analysis was to gain additional insight beyond either method individually for characterizing early events in rhombomere differentiation.

Using scMultiome, three stages of zebrafish hindbrain development were examined at 10hpf(whole embryos), 13hpf, and 16hpf. In the early hindbrain, the data shows that at 13hpf early rhombomere identities can be resolved but that the typical markers seen later are not fully expressed or resolved. At 10hpf clear rhombomere identities are not present. Rather at very early stages, the analysis suggests that three domains for pre-rhombomeres encompassing HB1 - r2+r3 (possibly r1, but this remains to be resolved); HB2 - r5+r6; and HB3 - 4 are present. These clusters or PHPDs are mixed populations that presumably resolve later as the embryo matures. They are shown to be responsive to developmental signals that pattern the neuroepithelium supporting the premise that these are rhombomeric organization structures.

Altogether the use of two methods of transcriptional interrogation i.e. ATACseq and RNA seq are strengths for the presented work to offer increased resolution of cell type characterization. The data analysis is reasonably supported by expression studies using in situ Hybridization Chain Reaction (HCR) to show mixed markers in the early stages. the PHPDs are also responsive to perturbation in retinoid acid, supporting the overall premise.

Overall, the work is well executed and analyzed. The impact in the field largely resides in bringing increasing resolution to earlier stages of rhombomere development and re-examining long held paradigms about when and potentially how rhombomere periodicity and pairing are established at the earliest stages. The premise that pre-rhombomeres may first establish large domains that sort or otherwise resolve themselves into rhombomeres is the most notable outcome from the work and will be seen as impactful in the field.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Proskurin and colleagues aim to test if neurons in rat medial prefrontal cortex encode strategy in a serial choice task. They recorded neural activity as rats performed a nose-poke task for reward. Rats were required to discover, without explicit instruction, which of the possible 3-action sequences were rewarded. One of several possible sequences remained the target (thereby triggering reward delivery) over a block of trials, before switching to an alternate sequence. The authors then used analysis of single neurons and ensembles of neural activity to determine if neural activity reflected whether a sequence was the dominant strategy in a block or an explorative test.

The strengths of the work include the timely and important hypothesis, and the use of appropriate methodologies to test it.

I commend the authors for endeavouring to tackle this challenging topic. The weaknesses of the work derive from the difficulties of studying such a challenging topic. It is extremely difficult to ascribe the variance of neural activity to a latent variable such as strategy, particularly in freely-moving animals motivated by reward. This is because of the plethora of potential confounders. For instance, the authors compare the encoding of one action (L) in two sequences (RLL and LLR). However, the analyzed action occurs in different local contexts. In the first, it is the middle action, and in the second it is the first action following a reward omission. Even though the reward is withheld, the rat presumably has some reward expectation. Because strategy is a latent variable, the evidentiary threshold is high, and alternate explanations of neural variance needed to be rejected. This is particularly important given the neural structures under investigation are involved in regulating motor output, suggesting that differences in response speed, body position, and related variables may explain considerable variance in neural activity. Other potential explanatory variables are rule certainty, position in the sequence, side chosen, preceding choice, and changes in firing rate as the session progresses due to changes in motivation, fatigue, or drift in the signal. The authors attempt to address some of these, but this is done in a very condensed presentation near the end of the results. This needs to be unpacked (and visualized) in order for readers to evaluate whether the strategy is the most likely explanation of neural variance, as proposed by the authors. The paper would benefit from analyses, such as multiple regression over all possible predictive variables, to evaluate the relative amount of neural signal variance attributable to strategy dominance compared to other information.

An additional weakness of the manuscript is the absence of some fundamental checks on data quality, particularly for bias in animal behavior, stability of neural activity during sessions, and bias in data sampling for classifier sampling.

In sum, the experimental methodology appears sufficient to address the authors' aim of evaluating the encoding of strategy by neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex. Alternate interpretations of the data, however, are not sufficiently ruled out by the analysis to strongly support the claim that the exploration of strategy is the primary driver of altered neural signalling. The data and methodologies are valuable to behavioral and systems neuroscientists. The task and the finding that rats appear to spontaneously explore alternate strategies are elegant, and a very nice paradigm for studying the neural mechanisms of strategy shifting. Moreover, the finding that many neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex change their firing rate during the task is an important new contribution. Future analysis and experiments will undoubtedly better resolve the information encoded by these changes in firing rate.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this article, Fox and colleagues describe the results of a novel and innovative task, coupled with a modified computational model, to explore pure directed exploration (not quite a pun, but intended nonetheless). In their task, participants make a series of discrete choices, importantly with no reward feedback, to navigate a nested series of rooms in a virtual environment. The initial 2-door choice is used as the primary probe and the complexity of the series of rooms behind each choice is used as the critical independent variable. The authors find that, as the number of follow-up options behind a door increases, "good" participants are more likely to choose the door that leads to the more complex choices. As the depth of the search increased (i.e. the room with the most doors was presented "farther" down the search), these same participants were less likely to choose the door leading to the more complex route. Finally, these same "good" participants showed an initial boost in preference towards the more complex exploration option after a few learning episodes that settled down after about 10 episodes, with a modest reliable preference towards the more complex route. This reflected the fact that information value decays over time in stable situations. Using an adaptation of standard Q-learning, with a proxy of information value being substituted for reward value, the authors show how their model can qualitatively capture most of the observed experimental effects, although with some critical differences in the temporal dynamics of learning, suggesting that the memory horizon for humans is longer than in the adapted Q-learning model.

Strengths:<br /> 1. Clever experimental design<br /> The novel task is really clever and gets around many of the limitations for understanding directed exploration that have plagued prior research (which typically involve some use of reward feedback). Finding a way to provide direct information that can be experimentally manipulated, without needing to provide any explicit reward feedback, makes this one of the few pure exploration tasks that I am aware of.

2. Compelling results<br /> The effect of manipulating choice complexity and depth on initial choice probability for "good" directed learners seems fairly strong, as do the learning dynamics. The heterogeneity in exploration style across participants is also interesting and brings up more questions that are useful for follow-up research.

3. Simple model<br /> The computational model used is a simple adaptation of standard reinforcement learning models, specifically Q-learning models. This is elegant as it doesn't require major changes in the dynamics of learning, simply a revision of the variables going into the update. The simplicity of this change, coupled with the ability to capture the results of the "good" directed explorers makes a strong case that information seeking and reward-seeking may share common underlying mechanisms (as shown previously by Kobayashi, K., & Hsu, M. (2019). Common neural code for reward and information value. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(26), 13061-13066.).

Weaknesses:

1. "Good" vs. "poor"<br /> There is an odd circularity, and implicit value judgment, in the classification of participants into "good" and "poor" directed explorers. The logic, based on the visit-counter model of directed exploration, is that the probability of repeating a choice (at the initial decision trial) should be low for directed explorers vs. random explorers. Doing the median split on repetition probability seems intuitively fine here, but it does bring up two issues. First, the labels "good" vs. "poor" seem arbitrarily judgemental, after all random exploration is a viable exploration strategy in many contexts. Would "directed" vs. "random" be more appropriate labels based on how the decision was made to categorize participants? Second, how much of the "good" participant performance is driven by the extreme non-repeaters? For example, if a tertiary split was performed instead of a binary median split, would the middle group show a weaker version of the effects seen in the "good" group or appear more like the "poor" group?

2. Characterization of information value<br /> The authors discuss primarily methods that can be summarized by visit counters as a description for all directed exploration models. However, that doesn't seem to be a good summary of the overall literature in this space. There are also entropy-based approaches, that quantify information value based on the statistics of the feedback. For example, in machine learning methods like the KL divergence are often used to represent the information value of a channel. A few such papers are highlighted below. Now it is entirely possible that these approaches can be extrapolated to simple visit-count approaches, but I am unaware of anything showing this. I think it would be good to broaden the discussion on directed exploration models beyond visit-counter methods like UCB, highlighting the other methods used to promote directed exploration.

Houthooft, R., Chen, X., Duan, Y., Schulman, J., De Turck, F., & Abbeel, P. (2016). Vime: Variational information maximizing exploration. Advances in neural information processing systems, 29.

Eysenbach, B., Gupta, A., Ibarz, J., & Levine, S. (2018). Diversity is all you need: Learning skills without a reward function. arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.06070.

Hazan, E., Kakade, S., Singh, K., & Van Soest, A. (2019, May). Provably efficient maximum entropy exploration. In International Conference on Machine Learning (pp. 2681-2691). PMLR.

3. Model vetting<br /> The model used to simulate the behavioral results is interesting and intuitive. However, there seem to be some things left on the table and unresolved. First, the definition of information value (E) that is maximized is assumed to satisfy the same constraints as typical reward does in the Bellman solution for reinforcement learning. This is the only way it can be substituted into the typical Q-learning method. Is that true here?

Second, the advantage of these simpler computational-level models is that they can be effectively fit to behavior. The model outlined in the paper has only a few free parameters (some of which can be fixed for convenience purposes). Was there an attempt to fit each participant's data into the model? This would be a powerful way of highlighting where exactly the differences between the "good" and "bad" participants arise.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This study examines how the correlation structure of a perceptual decision-making task influences history biases in responding. By manipulating whether stimuli were more likely to be repetitive or alternating, they found evidence from both behavior and a neural signal of decision formation that history biases are flexibly adapted to the environment. On the whole, these findings are supported across an impressive range of detailed behavioral and neural analyses. The methods and data from this study will likely be of interest to cognitive neuroscience and psychology researchers. The results provide new insights into the mechanisms of perceptual decision-making.

The behavioral analyses are thorough and convincing, supported by a large number of experimental trials (~600 in each of 3 environmental contexts) in 38 participants. The psychometric curves provide clear evidence of adaptive history biases. The paper then goes on to model the effect of history biases at the single trial level, using an elegant cross-validation approach to perform model selection and fitting. The results support the idea that, with trial-by-trial accuracy feedback, the participants adjusted their history biases due to the previous stimulus category, depending on the task structure in a way that contributed to performance.

The paper then examines MEG signatures of decision formation, to try to identify neural signatures of these adaptive biases. Looking specifically at motor beta lateralization, they found no evidence that starting-level bias due to the previous trial differed depending on the task context. This suggests that the adaptive bias unfolds in the dynamic part of the decision process, rather than reflecting a starting level bias. This is supported by analysis of lateralization relative to the chosen hand as a proxy for a decision variable (DV), whose slope is shown to be influenced by these adaptive biases.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this improved version of the manuscript, Chang et al set out to find direct interactions with the Eph-B2 receptor, as our knowledge of its function/regulation is still incomplete. Using proteomic analysis of Hela cells expressing EPHB2, they identified MYCBP2 a potential binder, which they then confirm using extensive biochemical analyses, an interaction that seems to be negatively affected by binding of ephrin-B2 (but not B1). Furthermore, they find that FBXO45, a known MYCBP2 interaction, strongly facilitates its binding to EPHB2. Intriguingly, these interactions depend on the extracellular domains of EPHB2, suggesting the involvement of additional proteins as MYCBP2 is thought to be a cytoplasmic protein. Finally, they find that, in contrast to what could be expected given the known function of MYCBP2 as a ubiquitin E3 ligase, it actually positively regulates EPHB2 protein stability, and function.

The strength of this manuscript is the extensive biochemical analysis of the EPHB2/MYCBP2/FBXO43 interactions. The vast majority of the conclusions supported by the data.

The attempt to extend the study to an in vivo animal using the worm is important, however the additive insight is, unfortunately, minimal.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This manuscript looks at the single-cell spike signatures taken from in vivo cerebellar nuclear neurons from awake mice suffering from 3 distinct diseases and uses a sophisticated classifier model to predict disease based on a number of different parameters about the spiking patterns, rather than just one or two. Single read-outs of spike firing patterns did not show significant differences between all 4 groups meaning that you need to analyze multiple parameters of the spike trains to get this information. The results are really satisfying and intriguing, with some diseases separating very well, and others having more overlap. It also represents a significant advancement for the rigor and creativity used for analyzing cerebellar output spike patterns. I really like this paper, it's a clever idea and has been done very well.

The authors examine multiple distinct forms of different diseases, including different types of ataxia, dystonia, and tremor. While some of the interpretation of this work remains unclear to this reviewer (in particular Figure 2, with ataxia models), I applaud the rigor and sharing of complex data that is not always straightforward to understand.

Strengths:<br /> The work is technically impressive and the analysis pushes the envelope of how cerebellar dysfunction is classified, which makes it an important paper for the field. It's well written. The approach it is taking is clever. The analysis is thorough, and the authors examine a wide array of different disease models, which is time-consuming, costly, and very challenging to do. It's a very strong manuscript.

Weaknesses:<br /> Weaknesses are few and quite minor. Some rewriting could be done to make certain sections clearer.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This manuscript describes a study of the olfactory tubercle in the context of reward representation in the brain. The authors do so by studying the responses of OT neurons to odors with various reward contingencies and compare systematically to the ventral pallidum. Through careful tracing, they present convincing anatomical evidence that the projection from the olfactory tubercle is restricted to the lateral portion of the ventral pallidum.

Using a clever behavioral paradigm, the authors then investigate how D1 receptor- vs. D2 receptor-expressing neurons of the OT respond to odors as mice learn different contingencies. The authors find that, while the D1-expressing OT neurons are modulated marginally more by the rewarded odor than the D2-expressing OT neurons as mice learn the contingencies, this modulation is significantly less than is observed for the ventral pallidum. In addition, neither of the OT neuron classes shows significant modulation by the reward itself. In contrast, the OT neurons contained information that could distinguish odor identities. These observations have led the authors to conclude that the primary feature represented in the OT is not reward.

Strengths:<br /> The highly localized projection pattern from olfactory tubercle to ventral pallidum is a valuable finding and suggests that studying this connection may give unique insights into the transformation of odor by reward association.

Comparison of olfactory tubercle vs. ventral pallidum is a good strategy to further clarify the olfactory tubercle's position in value representation in the brain.

Weaknesses:

The authors' interpretation of the physiologic results - that a novel framework is needed to interpret the OT's role - requires more careful treatment.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: 72 subjects, and 144 hemispheres, from the Human Connectome Project had their parietal sulci manually traced. This identified the presence of previously undescribed shallow sulci. One of these sulci, the ventral supralateral occipital sulcus (slocs-v), was then demonstrated to have functional specificity in spatial orientation. The discussion furthermore provides an eloquent overview of our understanding of the anatomy of the parietal cortex, situating their new work into the broader field. Finally, this paper stimulates further debate about the relative value of detailed manual anatomy, inherently limited in participant numbers and areas of the brain covered, against fully automated processing that can cover thousands of participants but easily misses the kinds of anatomical details described here.

Strengths:<br /> - This is the first paper describing the tertiary sulci of the parietal cortex with this level of detail, identifying novel shallow sulci and mapping them to behaviour and function.<br /> - It is a very elegantly written paper, situating the current work into the broader field.<br /> - The combination of detailed anatomy and function and behaviour is superb.

Weaknesses:<br /> - the numbers of subjects are inherently limited both in number as well as in being typically developing young adults.<br /> - while the paper begins by describing four new sulci, only one is explored further in greater detail.<br /> - there is some tension between calling the discovered sulci new vs acknowledging they have already been reported, but not named.<br /> - the anatomy of the sulci, as opposed to their relation to other sulci, could be described in greater detail.

Overall, to summarize, I greatly enjoyed this paper and believe it to be a highly valued contribution to the field.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Bzymek and Kloosterman carried out a complex experiment to determine the temporal spike dynamics of cells in the dorsal and intermediate lateral septum during the performance of a Y-maze spatial task. In this descriptive study, the authors aim to determine if inputting spatial and temporal dynamics of hippocampal cells carry over to the lateral septum, thereby presenting the possibility that this information could then be conveyed to other interconnected subcortical circuits. The authors are successful in these aims, demonstrating that the phenomenon of theta cycle skipping is present in cells of the lateral septum. This finding is a significant contribution to the field as it indicates the phenomenon is present in neocortex, hippocampus, and the subcortical hub of the lateral septal circuit. In effect, this discovery closes the circuit loop on theta cycle skipping between the interconnected regions of the entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, and lateral septum. Moreover, the authors make 2 additional findings: 1) There are differences in the degree of theta modulation and theta cycle skipping as a function of depth, between the dorsal and intermediate lateral septum; and 2) The significant proportion of lateral septum cells that exhibit theta cycle skipping, predominantly do so during 'non-local' spatial processing.

Strengths: The major strength of the study lies in its design, with 2 behavioral tasks within the Y-maze and a battery of established analyses drawn from prior studies that have established spatial and temporal firing patterns of entorhinal and hippocampal cells during these tasks. Primary among these analyses, is the ability to decode the animal's position relative to locations of increased spatial cognitive demand, such as the choice point before the goal arms. The presence of theta cycle skipping cells in the lateral septum is robust and has significant implications for the ability to dissect the generation and transfer of spatial routes to goals within and between the neocortex and subcortical neural circuits.

Weaknesses: There are no major discernable weaknesses in the study, yet the scope and mechanism of the theta cycle phenomenon remain to be placed in the context of other phenomena indicative of spatial processing independent of the animal's current position. An example of this would be the ensemble-level 'scan ahead' activity of hippocampal place cells (Gupta et al., 2012; Johnson & Redish, 2007). Given the extensive analytical demands of the study, it is understandable that the authors chose to limit the analyses to the spatial and burst firing dynamics of the septal cells rather than the phasic firing of septal action potentials relative to local theta oscillations or CA1 theta oscillations. Yet, one would ideally be able to link, rather than parse the phenomena of temporal dynamics. For example, Tingley et al recently showed that there was significant phase coding of action potentials in lateral septum cells relative to spatial location (Tingley & Buzsaki, 2018). This begs the question as to whether the non-uniform distribution of septal cell activity within the Y-maze may have a phasic firing component, as well as a theta cycle skipping component. If so, these phenomena could represent another means of information transfer within the spatial circuit during cognitive demands. Alternatively, these phenomena could be part of the same process, ultimately representing the coherent input of information from one region to another. Future experiments will therefore have to sort out whether theta cycle skipping, is a feature of either rate or phase coding, or perhaps both, depending on circuit and cognitive demands.

The authors have achieved their aims of describing the temporal dynamics of the lateral septum, at both the dorsal extreme and the intermediate region. All conclusions are warranted.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: This manuscript explores the development of a rodent voluntary oral THC consumption model. The authors use the model to demonstrate that similar effect levels of THC can be observed to what has previously been described for i.p. THC administration.

Strengths: Overall this is an interesting study with compelling data presented. There is a growing need within the field of cannabinoid research to explore more 'realistic' routes of cannabinoid administration, such as oral consumption or inhalation. The evidence presented here shows the utility of this oral administration model.

Weaknesses: The main weaknesses of the manuscript revolve around clarification of the Methods section. All of these weaknesses are described in the "Recommendations to authors" section. Revising the manuscript would account for many of these weaknesses.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Davenport et al have investigated how the administration of a masculinizing dose of estrogen changes the transcriptomes of several key song nuclei song and adjacent brain areas in juvenile zebra finches of both sexes. Only male zebra finches sing, learn song, and normally have a fully developed song control circuitry, so the study was aimed at further understanding how genetic and hormonal factors contribute to the dimorphism in song behavior and related brain circuitry in this species. Using WGCNA and follow-up correlations to re-analyze published transcriptome datasets, the authors provide evidence that the main variance of several identified gene co-expression modules shows significant correlations with one or some of the factors examined, including sex, estrogen treatment, regional neuroanatomy, or occurrence of vocal learning.

Strengths:<br /> Among the main strengths are the thorough gene co-expression module and correlation analyses, and the inclusion of both song nuclei and adjacent areas, the latter serving as sort of controls for areas that are not dimorphic and likely broadly present in birds in general. The most relevant finding is arguably the identification of some modules where gene expression variation within song nuclei correlates with hormonal effects and/or gene location on sex chromosomes, which are present at different dosages between sexes. The study also shows how a published RNA-seq dataset can be reanalyzed in novel and informative ways.

Weaknesses:<br /> Among its main weaknesses, the study relies entirely on one set of transcriptomic data and lacks effort to validate the inferred direction of regulation in the identified co-expression modules using other molecular methods or approaches on independent samples. The study shows that some representative and/or highly significant genes in some of the main modules that correlate with anatomical, sex, or hormone treatment group comparisons indeed differ in expression when comparing song nuclei vs surroundings, male vs female, or E2- vs VEH-treated tissues in independent samples by qPCR or in situ hybridization would provide important validation and enhance experimental rigor for the analyses presented. In the absence of this further validation, the WGCNA data need to be interpreted with caution.

The findings related to ex-chromosome genes (i.e. module E) are a significant strength of the study. Two points, however, need to be taken into account more closely. First, sex differences in gene expression in areas that are not song nuclei are likely related to functions other than song behavior or vocal learning, thus not related to the main question posed by the study. Furthermore, an alternative interpretation with regard to sex chromosome gene expression is that the higher male expression for a large number of Z chromosome genes may not significantly or fundamentally affect brain cell function and can be tolerated, thus not requiring active compensation. This alternative interpretation (mentioned for song nucleus RA in Friedrich et al, Cell Reports, 2022) suggesting that the higher male dosage of many of these genes might not affect or contribute to sex differences in brain function, cannot at present be discarded, and should at least be acknowledged.

Friedrich et al, Cell Reports, 2022 (Table S3 ) presented an extensive manual curation of W chromosome genes in zebra finches. BLAST alignments showed that a large proportion of W chromosome genes are also on the Z, noting that only a small subset of these are annotated as Z:W pairs. The genes that are truly W-specific and present at a higher dosage in females are thus only a fraction of W-chromosome genes. This creates a complication when examining the mapping of RNA-seq reads to sex chromosomes: to conclude about higher expression of W genes in female tissue samples one needs to take into account reads that may also map to the homologous genes on the Z, if that gene is present as a W:Z pair. Because Friedrich et al mapped reads to a male genome assembly, W genes were not assessed, thus the present study provides novel info. However, the issues above need to be acknowledged and taken into account to accurately assess sex differences in W chromosome gene expression.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

This manuscript develops a new method termed MINT for decoding of behavior. The method is essentially a table-lookup rather than a model. Within a given stereotyped task, MINT tabulates averaged firing rate trajectories of neurons (neural states) and corresponding averaged behavioral trajectories as stereotypes to construct a library. For a test trial with a realized neural trajectory, it then finds the closest neural trajectory to it in the table and declares the associated behavior trajectory in the table as the decoded behavior. The method can also interpolate between these tabulated trajectories. The authors mention that the method is based on three key assumptions: (1) Neural states may not be embedded in a low-dimensional subspace, but rather in a high-dimensional space. (2) Neural trajectories are sparsely distributed under different behavioral conditions. (3) These neural states traverse trajectories in a stereotyped order.

The authors conducted multiple analyses to validate MINT, demonstrating its decoding of behavioral trajectories in simulations and datasets (Figures 3, 4). The main behavior decoding comparison is shown in Figure 4. In stereotyped tasks, decoding performance is comparable (M_Cycle, MC_Maze) or better (Area 2_Bump) than other linear/nonlinear algorithms (Figure 4). However, MINT underperforms for the MC_RTT task, which is less stereotyped (Figure 4).

This paper is well-structured and its main idea is clear. The fact that performance on stereotyped tasks is high is interesting and informative, showing that these stereotyped tasks create stereotyped neural trajectories. The task-specific comparisons include various measures and a variety of common decoding approaches, which is a strength. However, I have several major concerns. I believe several of the conclusions in the paper, which are also emphasized in the abstract, are not accurate or supported, especially about generalization, computational scalability, and utility for BCIs. MINT is essentially a table-lookup algorithm based on stereotyped task-dependent trajectories and involves the tabulation of extensive data to build a vast library without modeling. These aspects will limit MINT's utility for real-world BCIs and tasks. These properties will also limit MINT's generalizability from task to task, which is important for BCIs and thus is commonly demonstrated in BCI experiments with other decoders without any retraining. Furthermore, MINT's computational and memory requirements can be prohibitive it seems. Finally, as MINT is based on tabulating data without learning models of data, I am unclear how it will be useful in basic investigations of neural computations. I expand on these concerns below.

Main comments:

1. MINT does not generalize to different tasks, which is a main limitation for BCI utility compared with prior BCI decoders that have shown this generalizability as I review below. Specifically, given that MINT tabulates task-specific trajectories, it will not generalize to tasks that are not seen in the training data even when these tasks cover the exact same space (e.g., the same 2D computer screen and associated neural space).

First, the authors provide a section on generalization, which is inaccurate because it mixes up two fundamentally different concepts: 1) collecting informative training data and 2) generalizing from task to task. The former is critical for any algorithm, but it does not imply the latter. For example, removing one direction of cycling from the training set as the authors do here is an example of generating poor training data because the two behavioral (and neural) directions are non-overlapping and/or orthogonal while being in the same space. As such, it is fully expected that all methods will fail. For proper training, the training data should explore the whole movement space and the associated neural space, but this does not mean all kinds of tasks performed in that space must be included in the training set (something MINT likely needs while modeling-based approaches do not). Many BCI studies have indeed shown this generalization ability using a model. For example, in Weiss et al. 2019, center-out reaching tasks are used for training and then the same trained decoder is used for typing on a keyboard or drawing on the 2D screen. In Gilja et al. 2012, training is on a center-out task but the same trained decoder generalizes to a completely different pinball task (hit four consecutive targets) and tasks requiring the avoidance of obstacles and curved movements. There are many more BCI studies, such as Jarosiewicz et al. 2015 that also show generalization to complex real-world tasks not included in the training set. Unlike MINT, these works can achieve generalization because they model the neural subspace and its association to movement. On the contrary, MINT models task-dependent neural trajectories, so the trained decoder is very task-dependent and cannot generalize to other tasks. So, unlike these prior BCIs methods, MINT will likely actually need to include every task in its library, which is not practical.

I suggest the authors remove claims of generalization and modify their arguments throughout the text and abstract. The generalization section needs to be substantially edited to clarify the above points. Please also provide the BCI citations and discuss the above limitation of MINT for BCIs.

2. MINT is shown to achieve competitive/high performance in highly stereotyped datasets with structured trials, but worse performance on MC_RTT, which is not based on repeated trials and is less stereotyped. This shows that MINT is valuable for decoding in repetitive stereotyped use-cases. However, it also highlights a limitation of MINT for BCIs, which is that MINT may not work well for real-world and/or less-constrained setups such as typing, moving a robotic arm in 3D space, etc. This is again due to MINT being a lookup table with a library of stereotyped trajectories rather than a model. Indeed, the authors acknowledge that the lower performance on MC_RTT (Figure 4) may be caused by the lack of repeated trials of the same type. However, real-world BCI decoding scenarios will also not have such stereotyped trial structure and will be less/un-constrained, in which MINT underperforms. Thus, the claim in the abstract or lines 480-481 that MINT is an "excellent" candidate for clinical BCI applications is not accurate and needs to be qualified. The authors should revise their statements according and discuss this issue. They should also make the use-case of MINT on BCI decoding clearer and more convincing.

3. Related to 2, it may also be that MINT achieves competitive performance in offline and trial-based stereotyped decoding by overfitting to the trial structure in a given task, and thus may not generalize well to online performance due to overfitting. For example, a recent work showed that offline decoding performance may be overfitted to the task structure and may not represent online performance (Deo et al. 2023). Please discuss.

4. Related to 2, since MINT requires firing rates to generate the library and simple averaging does not work for this purpose in the MC_RTT dataset (that does not have repeated trials), the authors needed to use AutoLFADS to infer the underlying firing rates. The fact that MINT requires the usage of another model to be constructed first and that this model can be computationally complex, will also be a limiting factor and should be clarified.

5. I also find the statement in the abstract and paper that "computations are simple, scalable" to be inaccurate. The authors state that MINT's computational cost is O(NC) only, but it seems this is achieved at a high memory cost as well as computational cost in training. The process is described in section "Lookup table of log-likelihoods" on line [978-990]. The idea is to precompute the log-likelihoods for any combination of all neurons with discretization x all delay/history segments x all conditions and to build a large lookup table for decoding. Basically, the computational cost of precomputing this table is O(V^{Nτ} x TC) and the table requires a memory of O(V^{Nτ}), where V is the number of discretization points for the neural firing rates, N is the number of neurons, τ is the history length, T is the trial length, and C is the number of conditions. This is a very large burden, especially the V^{Nτ} term. This cost is currently not mentioned in the manuscript and should be clarified in the main text. Accordingly, computation claims should be modified including in the abstract.

6. In addition to the above technical concerns, I also believe the authors should clarify the logic behind developing MINT better. From a scientific standpoint, we seek to gain insights into neural computations by making various assumptions and building models that parsimoniously describe the vast amount of neural data rather than simply tabulating the data. For instance, low-dimensional assumptions have led to the development of numerous dimensionality reduction algorithms and these models have led to important interpretations about the underlying dynamics (e.g., fixed points/limit cycles). While it is of course valid and even insightful to propose different assumptions from existing models as the authors do here, they do not actually translate these assumptions into a new model. Without a model and by just tabulating the data, I don't believe we can provide interpretation or advance the understanding of the fundamentals behind neural computations. As such, I am not clear as to how this library building approach can advance neuroscience or how these assumptions are useful. I think the authors should clarify and discuss this point.

7. Related to 6, there seems to be a logical inconsistency between the operations of MINT and one of its three assumptions, namely, sparsity. The authors state that neural states are sparsely distributed in some neural dimensions (Figure 1a, bottom). If this is the case, then why does MINT extend its decoding scope by interpolating known neural states (and behavior) in the training library? This interpolation suggests that the neural states are dense on the manifold rather than sparse, thus being contradictory to the assumption made. If interpolation-based dense meshes/manifolds underlie the data, then why not model the neural states through the subspace or manifold representations? I think the authors should address this logical inconsistency in MINT, especially since this sparsity assumption also questions the low-dimensional subspace/manifold assumption that is commonly made.

References

Weiss, Jeffrey M., Robert A. Gaunt, Robert Franklin, Michael L. Boninger, and Jennifer L. Collinger. 2019. "Demonstration of a Portable Intracortical Brain-Computer Interface." Brain-Computer Interfaces 6 (4): 106-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/2326263X.2019.1709260.

Gilja, Vikash, Paul Nuyujukian, Cindy A. Chestek, John P. Cunningham, Byron M. Yu, Joline M. Fan, Mark M. Churchland, et al. 2012. "A High-Performance Neural Prosthesis Enabled by Control Algorithm Design." Nature Neuroscience 15 (12): 1752-1757. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3265.

Jarosiewicz, Beata, Anish A. Sarma, Daniel Bacher, Nicolas Y. Masse, John D. Simeral, Brittany Sorice, Erin M. Oakley, et al. 2015. "Virtual Typing by People with Tetraplegia Using a Self-Calibrating Intracortical Brain-Computer Interface." Science Translational Medicine 7 (313): 313ra179-313ra179. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aac7328.

Darrel R. Deo, Francis R. Willett, Donald T. Avansino, Leigh R. Hochberg, Jaimie M. Henderson, and Krishna V. Shenoy. 2023. "Translating Deep Learning to Neuroprosthetic Control." BioRxiv, 2023.04.21.537581. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.21.537581.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This study explores how condensin and telomere proteins cooperate to facilitate sister chromatid disjunction at chromosome ends during anaphase. Building upon previous results published by the same group (Reyes et al. 2015, Berthezene et al. 2020), the authors demonstrate that condensin is essential for sister telomere disjunction in anaphase in fission yeast. The primary role of condensin appears to be counteracting cohesin, which holds sister telomeres together. Furthermore, condensin is found to be enriched at telomeres, and this enrichment partially relies on Taz1, the principal telomere factor in S. pombe. The loss of Taz1 does not cause an obvious defect in sister telomere disjunction, which prevents drawing strong conclusions about its role in this process.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This paper by Portela Catani et al examines the antigenic relationships (measured using monotypic ferret and mouse sera) across a panel of N2 genes from the past 14 years, along with the underlying sequence differences and phylogenetic relationships. This is a highly significant topic given the recent increased appreciation of the importance of NA as a vaccine target, and the relative lack of information about NA antigenic evolution compared with what is known about HA. Thus, these data will be of interest to those studying the antigenic evolution of influenza viruses. The methods used are generally quite sound, though there are a few addressable concerns that limit the confidence with which conclusions can be drawn from the data/analyses.

Strengths:<br /> - The significance of the work, and the (general) soundness of the methods.<br /> - Explicit comparison of results obtained with mouse and ferret sera.

Weaknesses:<br /> - Approach for assessing the influence of individual polymorphisms on antigenicity does not account for the potential effects of epistasis.<br /> - Machine learning analyses were neither experimentally validated nor shown to be better than simple, phylogenetic-based inference.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The dogma in the Trypanosome field is that transmission by Tsetse flies is ensured by stumpy forms. This has been recently challenged by the Engstler lab (Schuster et al. ), which showed that slender forms can also be transmitted by teneral flies. In this work, the authors aimed to test whether transmission by slender forms is possible and frequent.

For this, the authors repeated Tsetse transmission experiments but with some key critical differences relative to Schuster et al. First, they infected teneral and adult flies. Second, their infective meals lacked two components (N-acetylglucosamine and glutathione), which could have boosted the infection rates in the Schuster et al. work. In these conditions, the authors observed that most stumpy form infections with teneral and adult flies were successful while only 1 out of 24 slender-form infections was successful. Adult flies showed a lower infection rate, which is probably because their immune system is more developed.

Given that in Tsetse-infested areas most transmission is likely ensured by adult flies, the authors conclude that the parasite stage that will have a significant epidemiologic impact on transmission is the stumpy form.

Strengths:<br /> • This work tackles an important question in the field.<br /> • The Rotureau laboratory has well-known expertise in Tsetse fly transmission experiments.<br /> • Experimental setup is robust and data is solid.<br /> • The paper is concise and clearly written.

Weaknesses:<br /> • The reason(s) for why this work has lower infection rates with slender forms than Schuster et al. remain unknown. The authors suggested it could be because of the absence of N-acetylglucosamine and/or glutathione, but this was not formally tested. Could another source of variation be the clone of EATRO1125 AnTat1.1 (Paris versus Munich origin)? To reduce the workload, such additional experiments could be done with just one dose of parasites.<br /> • The characterization of what is slender and stumpy is critical. The authors used PAD1 protein expression as the sole reporter. While this is a robust assay to confirm stumpy, an analysis of the cell cycle would have been helpful to confirm that slender forms have not initiated differentiation (Larcombe S et al. 2023, preprint).<br /> • Statistical analysis is missing. Is the difference between adult and teneral infections statistically significant?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: In this paper, Ruan et al. studied the long-term impact of warming and altered precipitations on the composition and growth of the soil microbial community. The researchers adopted an experimental approach to assess the impact of climate change on microbial diversity and functionality. This study was carried out within a controlled environment, wherein two primary factors were assessed: temperature (in two distinct levels) and humidity (across three different levels). These factors were manipulated in a full factorial design, resulting in a total of six treatments. This experimental setup was maintained for ten years. To analyze the active microbial community, the researchers employed a technique involving the incorporation of radiolabeled water into biomolecules (particularly DNA) through quantitative stable isotope probing. This allowed for the tracking of the active fraction of microbes, accomplished via isopycnic centrifugation, followed by Illumina sequencing of the denser fraction. This study was followed by a series of statistical analysis to identify the impact of these two variables on the whole community and specific taxonomic groups. The full factorial design arrangement enabled the researchers to discern both individual contributions as well as potential interactions among the variables

Strengths: This work presents a timely study that assesses in a controlled fashion the potential impact of global warming and altered precipitations on microbial populations. The experimental setup, experimental approach and data analysis seem to be overall solid. I consider the paper of high interest for the whole community as it provides a baseline to the assessment of global warming on microbial diversity.

Weaknesses: While taxonomic information is interesting, it would have been highly valuable to include transcriptomics data as well. This would allow us to understand what active pathways become enriched under warming and altered precipitations. Non-metabolic OTUs hold significance as well. The authors could have potentially described these non-incorporators and derived hypotheses from the gathered information. The work would have benefited from using more biological replicates of each treatment.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

SUMMARY:

The manuscript by Bian et al. promotes the idea that creatine is a new neurotransmitter. The authors conduct an impressive combination of mass spectrometry (Fig. 1), genetics (Figs. 2, 3, 6), biochemistry (Figs. 2, 3, 8), immunostaining (Fig. 4), electrophysiology (Figs. 5, 6, 7), and EM (Fig. 8) in order to offer support for the hypothesis that creatine is a CNS neurotransmitter.

STRENGTHS:

There are many strengths to this study.<br /> • The combinatorial approach is a strength. There is no shortage of data in this study.<br /> • The careful consideration of specific criteria that creatine would need to meet in order to be considered a neurotransmitter is a strength.<br /> • The comparison studies that the authors have done in parallel with classical neurotransmitters is helpful.<br /> • Demonstration that creatine has inhibitory effects is another strength.<br /> • The new genetic mutations for Slc6a8 and AGAT are strengths and potentially incredibly helpful for downstream work.

WEAKNESSES:<br /> • Some data are indirect. Even though Slc6a8 and AGAT are helpful sentinels for the presence of creatine, they are not creatine themselves. Of note, these molecules themselves are not essential for making the case that creatine is a neurotransmitter.<br /> • Regarding Slc6a8, it seems to work only as a reuptake transporter - not as a transporter into SVs. Therefore, we do not know what the transporter into the TVs is.<br /> • Puzzlingly, Slc6a8 and AGAT are in different cells, setting up the complicated model that creatine is created in one cell type and then processed as a neurotransmitter in another. This matter will likely need to be resolved in future studies.<br /> • No candidate receptor for creatine has been identified postsynaptically. This will likely need to be resolved in future studies.<br /> • Because no candidate receptor has been identified, it is important to fully consider other possibilities for roles of creatine that would explain these observations other than it being a neurotransmitter? There is some attention to this in the Discussion.

There are several criteria that define a neurotransmitter. The authors nicely delineated many criteria in their discussion, but it is worth it for readers to do the same with their own understanding of the data.

By this reviewer's understanding (and combining some textbook definitions together) a neurotransmitter: 1) must be present within the presynaptic neuron and stored in vesicles; 2) must be released by depolarization of the presynaptic terminal; 3) must require Ca2+ influx upon depolarization prior to release; 4) must bind specific receptors present on the postsynaptic cell; 5) exogenous transmitter can mimic presynaptic release; 6) there exists a mechanism of removal of the neurotransmitter from the synaptic cleft.

For a paper to claim that the published work has identified a new neurotransmitter, several of these criteria would be met - and the paper would acknowledge in the discussion which ones have not been met. For this particular paper, this reviewer finds that condition 1 is clearly met.

Conditions 2 and 3 seem to be met by electrophysiology, but there are caveats here. High KCl stimulation is a blunt instrument that will depolarize absolutely everything in the prep all at once and could result in any number of non-specific biological reactions as a result of K+ rushing into all neurons in the prep. Moreover, the results in 0 Ca2+ are puzzling. For creatine (and for the other neurotransmitters), why is there such a massive uptick in release, even when the extracellular saline is devoid of calcium?

Condition 4 is not discussed in detail at all. In the discussion, the authors elide the criterion of receptors specified by Purves by inferring that the existence of postsynaptic responses implies the existence of receptors. True, but does it specifically imply the existence of creatinergic receptors? This reviewer does not think that is necessarily the case. The authors should be appropriately circumspect and consider other modes of inhibition that are induced by activation or potentiation of other receptors (e.g., GABAergic or glycinergic).

Condition 5 may be met, because authors applied exogenous creatine and observed inhibition. However, this is tough to know without understanding the effects of endogenous release of creatine. if they were to test if the absence of creatine caused excess excitation (at putative creatinergic synapses), then that would be supportive of the same. Nicely, Ghirardini et al., 2023 study cited by the reviewers does provide support for this exact notion in pyramidal neurons.

For condition 6, the authors made a great effort with Slc6a8. This is a very tough criterion to understand or prove for many synapses and neurotransmitters.

In terms of fundamental neuroscience, the story should be impactful. There are certainly more neurotransmitters out there than currently identified and by textbook criteria, creatine seems to be one of them taking all of the data in this study and others into account.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

The authors, Y Chang and colleagues, have performed elegant studies in transgenic mouse models that were designed to examine glutamatergic transmission in noradrenergic neurons, with a focus on respiratory regulation. They generated 3 different transgenic lines, in which a red fluorophore was expressed in dopamine-B-hydroxylase (DBH; noradrenergic and adrenergic neurons) neurons that did not express a vesicular glutamate transporter (Vglut) and a green fluorophore in DBH neurons that did express one of either Vglut1, Vglut2 or Vglut3.

Further experiments generated a transgenic mouse with knockout of Vglut2 in DBH neurons. The authors used plethysmography to measure respiratory parameters in conscious, unrestrained mice in response to various challenges.

Strengths:

The distribution of the Vglut expression is broadly in agreement with other studies, but with the addition of some novel Vglut3 expression. Validation of the transgenic results, using in situ hybridization histochemistry to examine mRNA expression, revealed potential modulation of Vglut2 expression during phases of development. This dataset is comprehensive, well-presented and very useful.

In the physiological studies the authors observed that neither baseline respiratory parameters, nor respiratory responses to hypercapnea (5, 7, 10% CO2) or hypoxia (10% O2) were different between knockout mice and littermate controls. The studies are well-designed and comprehensive. They provide observations that are supportive of previous reports using similar methodology.

Weaknesses:

In relation to the expression of Vglut2, the authors conclude that modulation of expression occurs, such that in adulthood there are differences in expression patterns in some (nor)adrenergic cell groups. Altered sensitivity is provided as an explanation for different results between studies examining mRNA expression. These are likely explanations; however, the conclusion would really be definitive with inclusion of a conditional cre expressing mouse. Given the effort taken to generate this dataset, it seems to me that taking that extra step would be of value for the overall understanding of glutamatergic expression in these catecholaminergic neurons

The respiratory physiology is very convincing and provides clear support for the view that Vglut2 is not required for modulation of the respiratory parameters measured and the reflex responses tested. It is stated that this is surprising. However, comparison with the data from Abbott et al., Eur J Neurosci (2014) in which the same transgenic approach was used, shows that they also observed no change in baseline breathing frequency. Differences were observed with strong, coordinated optogenetic stimulation, but, as discussed in this manuscript, it is not clear what physiological function this is relevant to. It just shows that some C1 neurons can use glutamate as a signaling molecule. Further, Holloway et al., Eur J Neurosci (2015), using the same transgenic mouse approach, showed that the respiratory response to optogenetic activation of Phox2 expressing neurons is not altered in DBH-Vglut2 KO mice. The conclusion seems to be that some C1 neuron effects are reliant upon glutamatergic transmission (C1-DMV for example), and some not.

Further contrast is made in this manuscript to the work of Malheiros-Lima and colleagues (eLife 2020) who showed that the activation of abdominal expiratory nerve activity in response to peripheral chemoreceptor activation with cyanide was dependent upon C1 neurons and could be attenuated by blockade of glutamate receptors in the pFRG - i.e. the supposition that glutamate release from C1 neurons was responsible for the function. However, it is interesting to observe that diaphragm EMG responses to hypercapnia (10% CO2) or cyanide, and the expiratory activation to hypercapnia, were not affected by the glutamate receptor blockade. Thus, a very specific response is affected and one that was not measured in the current study.

These previous published observations are consistent with the current study which provides a more comprehensive analysis of the role of glutamatergic contributions respiratory physiology. A more nuanced discussion of the data and acknowledgement of the differences, which are not actually at odds, would improve the paper and place the information within a more comprehensive model.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

This study aims to demonstrate that cortical feedback is not necessary to signal behavioral outcome to shell neurons of the inferior colliculus during a sound detection task. The demonstration is achieved by the observation of the activity of cortico-recipient neurons in animals which have received lesions of the auditory cortex. The experiment shows that neither behavior performance nor neuronal responses are significantly impacted by cortical lesions except for the case of partial lesions which seem to have a disruptive effect on behavioral outcome signaling.

Strengths:

The experimental procedure is based on state of the art methods. There is an in depth discussion of the different effects of auditory cortical lesions on sound detection behavior.

Weaknesses:

The analysis is not documented enough to be correctly evaluated. Have the authors pooled together trials with different sound levels for the key hit vs miss decoding/clustering analysis? If so, the conclusions are not well supported, as there are more misses for low sound levels, which would completely bias the outcome of the analysis. It would possible that the classification of hit versus misses actually only reflects a decoding of sound level based on sensory responses in the colliculus, and it would not be surprising then that in the presence or absence of cortical feedback, some neurons responds more to higher sound levels (hits) and less to lower sound levels (misses). It is important that the authors clarify and in any case perform an analysis in which the classification of hits vs misses is done only for the same sound levels. The description of feedback signals could be more detailed although it is difficult to achieve good temporal resolution with the calcium imaging technique necessary for targeting cortico-recipient neurons.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

ZMYM2 is a transcriptional repressor known to bind to the post-translational modification SUMO2/3. It has been implicated in the silencing of genes and transposons in a variety of contexts, but lacking sequence-specific DNA binding, little is known about how it is targeted to specific regions. At least two reports indicate association with TRIM28 targets (Tsusaka 2020 Epigenetics & Chromatin, Graham-Paquin 2023 NAR) but no physical association with TRIM28 targets had been demonstrated. Tsusaka 2020 theorizes an indirect, potentially SUMO-independent, interaction via ATF7IP and SETDB1.

Here, Owen and colleagues show that a subset of ZMYM2-binding sites in U2OS cells are clearly TRIM28 sites, and further find that hundreds of genes are silenced by both ZMYM2 and TRIM28. They next demonstrate that ZMYM2 homes to chromatin, and interacts with TRIM28, in a SUMOylation-dependent manner, suggesting that ZMYM2 is recognizing SUMOylation on TRIM28 or a protein associated with TRIM28. ZMYM2 separately homes to SINE elements bound by the ChAHP complex in an apparently SUMOylation independent manner. Although this is not the first report to show physical interaction between ZMYM2 and ChAHP, it is the first to show that ZMYM2 homes to ChAHP-binding sites and functions as a corepressor at these sites. Finally the authors demonstrate that ZMYM2 and TRIM28 coregulate genic targets by inducing repression at LTRs within the same TADs as the genes in question.

Overall, the manuscript is well-written, convincing, and fills a significant hole in our understanding of ZMYM2's mechanistic function. The revised version of this manuscript addresses all of my previous concerns well.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Chen et al. investigated how intermittent fasting causes metabolic benefits in obese mice and found that intestinal ILC3 and IL-22-IL-22R signaling contribute to the beiging of white adipose tissue (WAT) and consequent metabolic benefits including improved glucose and lipid metabolism in diet-induced obese mice. They demonstrate that intermittent fasting causes increased IL22+ILC3 in small intestines of mice. Adoptive transfer of purified intestinal ILC3 or administration of exogenous IL-22 can lead to increases in UCP1 gene expression and energy expenditure as well as improved glucose metabolism. Importantly, the above metabolic benefits caused by intermittent fasting are abolished in IL-22R-/- mice. Using an in vitro experiment, the authors show that ILC3-derived IL-22 may directly act on adipocytes to promote SVF beige differentiation. Finally, by performing sc-RNA-seq analysis of intestinal immune cells from mice with different treatments, the authors indicate a possible way of intestinal ILC3 being activated by intermittent fasting. Overall, this study provides a new mechanistic explanation for the metabolic benefits of intermittent fasting and reveals the role of intestinal ILC3 in the enhancement of the whole-body energy expenditure and glucose metabolism likely via IL-22-induced beige adipogenesis.

Although this study presents some interesting findings, particularly IL-22 derived from intestinal ILC3 could induce beiging of WAT by directly acting on adipocytes, the experimental data are not sufficient to support the key claims in the manuscript.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In animals, several recent studies have revealed a substantial role for non-replicative mutagenic processes such as DNA damage and repair rather than replicative error as was previously believed. Much less is known about how mutation operates in plants, with only a handful of studies devoted to the topic. Authors Satake et al. aimed to address this gap in our understanding by comparing the rates and patterns of somatic mutation in a pair of tropical tree species, slow-growing Shorea lavis and fast-growing S. leprosula. They find that the yearly somatic mutation rates in the two species is highly similar despite their difference in growth rates. The authors further find that the mutation spectrum is enriched for signatures of spontaneous mutation and that a model of mutation arising from different sources is consistent with a large input of mutation from sources uncorrelated with cell division. The authors conclude that somatic mutation rates in these plants appears to be dictated by time, not cell division numbers, a finding that is in line with other eukaryotes studied so far.

In general, this work shows careful consideration and study design, and the multiple lines of evidence presented provide good support for the authors' conclusions. In particular, they use a sound approach to identify rare somatic mutations in the sampled trees including biological replicates, multiple SNP-callers and thresholds, and without presumption of a branching pattern.

Inter-species comparisons of absolute mutation rates is challenging. This is largely due to differences in SNP-calling methods and reference genome quality leading to variable sensitivity and specificity in identifying mutations. By applying their pipeline consistently across both species, the authors provide confidence in the comparative mutation rate results. Moreover, the presented false negative and false positive rate estimates for each species would apparently have minimal impact on the overall findings.

Despite the overall elegance of the authors' experimental setup, one methodological wrinkle warrants consideration. The authors compare the mutation rate per meter of growth, demonstrating that the rate is higher in slow-growing S. laevis: a key piece of evidence in favor of the authors' conclusion that somatic mutations track absolute time rather than cell division. To estimate the mutation rate per unit distance, they regress the per base-pair rate of mutations found between all pairwise branch tips against the physical distance separating the tips (Fig. 2a). While a regression approach is appropriate, the narrowness of the confidence interval is overstated as the points are not statistically independent: internal branches are represented multiple times. (For example, all pairwise comparisons involving a cambium sample will include the mutations arising along the lower trunk.) Regressing rates and lengths of distinct branches might be more appropriate. Judging from the data presented, however, the point estimates seem unlikely to change much.

This work deepens our understanding of how mutation operates at the cellular level by adding plants to the list of eukaryotes in which many mutations appear to derive from non-replicative sources. Given these results, it is intriguing to consider whether there is a fundamental mechanism linking mutation across distantly related species. Plants, generally, present a unique opportunity in the study of mutation as the germline is not sequestered, as it is in animals, and thus the forces of both mutation and selection acting throughout an individual plant's life could in principle affect the mutations transmitted to seed. The authors touch on this aspect, finding no evidence for a reduction in non-synonymous somatic mutations relative to the background rate, but more work-both experimental and observational-is needed to understand the dynamics of mutation and cell-competition within an individual plant. Overall, these results open the door to several intriguing questions in plant mutation. For example, is somatic mutation age-dependent in other species, and do other tropical plants harbor a high mutation rate relative to temperate genera? Any future inquiries on this topic would benefit from modeling their approach for identifying somatic mutations on the methods laid out here.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Overview<br /> The authors propose a personalized ventricular computational model (Geno-DT) that incorporates the patient's structural remodeling (fibrosis and scar locations based on LGE-CMR scans) as well as genotyping (cell membrane kinetics based on genetic testing results) to predict VT locations and morphologies in ARVC setting.<br /> To test the model, the authors conducted a retrospective study using 16 ARVC patient data with two genotypes (PKP2, GE) and reported high degree of sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. In addition, the authors determined that in GE patients, VT was driven by fibrotic remodeling, whereas, in PKP2 patients, VT was associated with a combination of structural and electrical remodeling (slowed conduction and altered restitution).<br /> Based on the findings, the authors recommend using Geno-DT approach to augment therapeutic accuracy in treatment of ARVC patients.

Critiques<br /> 1. The small sample size is a limitation but has already been acknowledge and documented by the authors.<br /> 2. Another limitation is the consideration of only two of the possible genotypes in developing the cell membrane kinetics, but again has acknowledged by the authors.

Final Thoughts<br /> The authors have done a commendable job in targeting a disease phenotype that is relatively rare, which constrains the type of data that can be collected for research. Their personalized computational model approach makes a valuable contribution in furthering our understanding of ARVC mechanisms.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> During successive rounds of cell division in E. coli, a lineage of increasingly aging progeny arises whose members exhibit decreased elongation rates, increased accumulation of inclusion bodies, and reduced gene expression. These hallmarks of physiological aging point to an evolutionary antecedent to the better-studied phenomenon of biological aging in eukaryotic systems. In this work, the authors find an upstream phenotype attributable to this aging lineage of E. coli cells: a marked decrease in cellular ribosome levels. The authors conjecture that such an upstream effect may have cascading effects on cellular metabolism and reduced gene expression. This is a new hypothesis that challenges the more broadly held view that toxicity from protein aggregates asymmetrically retained by mother cells is the cause of asymmetric growth rates. The thesis and the broad scope that it entails offer a number of exciting directions to engage with in the future.

Strengths:<br /> The authors' single-cell analysis convincingly shows differential partitioning of ribosomes that correlates with growth (elongation) rates between daughter cells. This makes the authors' novel hypothesis that asymmetric ribosome partitioning determines asymmetric cell growth plausible.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors' did not measure levels of misfolded proteins in mother and daughter cells to distinguish between a toxicity model (retained aggregates are toxic to older cells) and a protein synthesis disadvantage model (less ribosomes, slower growth in older cells) to explain slower growth in aged cells. Therefore, while the authors' hypothesis is plausible, it is not the sole potential mechanism that explains their observations.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors employed a new strategy, covalent substrate-labeling, to address the open issue of the substrate transport mechanism by single particle cryogenic-EM. A cyclic peptide (QZ-Ala), which was already used in the past as a substrate for structural purposes, was modified and covalently attached to ABCB1 at strategic positions in the transmembrane domain via Cys-specific coupling chemistry. Overall, four mutations (two per TMD) were generated and functionally analyzed. These residues are in proximity to the QZ-Ala binding site and are labeled by verapamil. Interestingly, two mutants could only be labeled if ATP and Mg2+ were present.

Strengths:<br /> Three of the four mutants were structurally analyzed by single particle cryo-EM with structures in both, the inward- and outward-facing conformation and overall resolutions ranging from 2.6 to 4.3 Å. Applying multi-model analyses allowed for the extraction of additional structures from one data set. These structures formed the basis for a detailed analysis of the substrate translocation pathway. This enabled the researcher to compare the IF and OF states of the same mutant and same substrate, which is pivotal for their conclusions. The mutations 335/978 trap the substrate at different points of the translocation pathway, while 971 located two helical turns away from the first set, trapped the system at a later stage. The described strategy revealed a cascade of conformational changes during substrate transport which focus on TMH1, which is straight in the IF state, but swings out in the OF state. Pivotal for such a change is G72. This residue was mutated to Ala and also structurally analyzed. These structures were supported by MD simulations and functional data. Thus, the new prosed kinking and straightening mechanisms are different from the so far accepted wide-open OF state observed in bacterial transporters. This clearly suggests a different mechanism for ABCB1.

Weaknesses:<br /> I have a couple of minor issues that I have listed in the section recommendations for authors Overall, the manuscript is very well written, sheds new light on the molecular mechanism of substrate translocation by ABCB1, and might even provide a new starting point for inhibitor design. I know that it is unusual, but I like the manuscript in its current version and recommend acceptance in its current form.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This work uses multiscale molecular dynamics simulations to demonstrate molecular mechanism(s) for phosphatidylinositol regulation of voltage gated sodium channel (Nav1.4) gating. Recent experimental work by Gada et al. JGP 2023 showed altered Nav1.4 gating when Nav1.4 current was recorded with simultaneous application of PI(4,5)P2 dephosphorylate. Here the authors revealed probable molecular mechanism that can explain PI(4,5)P2 modulation of Nav1.4 gating. They found PIP lipids interacting with the gating charges - potentially making it harder to move the voltage sensor domain and altering the channels voltage sensitivity. They also found a stable PIP binding site that reaches the D_IV S4-S5 linker, reducing the mobility of the linker and potentially competing with the C-terminal domain.

Strengths:<br /> Using multiscale simulations with course-grained simulations to capture lipid-protein interactions and the overall protein lipid fingerprint and then all-atom simulations to verify atomistic details for specific lipid-protein interactions is extremely appropriate for the question at hand. Overall, the types of simulation and their length are suitable for the questions the authors pose and a thorough set of analysis was done which illustrates the observed PIP-protein interactions.

Weaknesses:<br /> Although the set of current simulations and analysis supports the conclusions drawn nicely, there are some limitations imposed by the authors on the course-grained simulations. If those were not imposed, it would have allowed for an even richer set and more thorough exploration of the protein-lipid interactions. The Martini 2 force field indeed cannot change secondary structure but if run with a properly tuned elastic network instead of backbone restraints, the change in protein configuration can be sampled and/or some adaptation of the protein to the specific protein environment can be observed. Additionally, with the 4to1 heavy atoms to a bead mapping some detailed chemical specificity is averaged out but parameters for different PIP family members do exist - including specific PIP(4,5)P2 vs PIP(3,4)P2, and could have been explored.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This study investigates subtelomeric repetitive sequences in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, known as Y' and X-elements. Taking advantage of yeast strain SY12 that contains only 3 chromosomes and six telomeres (normal yeast strains contain 32 telomeres) the authors are able to generate a strain completely devoid of Y'- and X-elements.

Strengths: They demonstrate that the SY12 delta XY strain displays normal growth, with stable telomeres of normal length that were transcriptionally silenced, a key finding with wide implications for telomere biology. Inactivation of telomerase in the SY12 and SY12 delta XY strains frequently resulted in survivors that had circularized all three chromosomes, hence bypassing the need for telomeres altogether. The SY12 and SY12 delta XY yeast strains can become a useful tool for future studies of telomere biology. The conclusions of this manuscript are mostly well supported by the data and are important for researchers studying telomeres.

Weaknesses: A weakness of the manuscript is the analysis of telomere transcriptional silencing. They state: "The results demonstrated a significant increase in the expression of the MPH3 and HSP32 upon Sir2 deletion, indicating that telomere silencing remains effective in the absence of X and Y'-elements". However, there are no statistical analyses performed as far as I can see. For some of the strains, the significance of the increased expression in sir2 (especially for MPH3) looks questionable. In addition, a striking observation is that the SY12 strain (with only three chromosomes) express much less of both MPH3 and HSP32 than the parental strain BY4742 (16 chromosomes), both in the presence and absence of Sir2. In fact, the expression of both MPH3 and HSP32 in the SY12 sir2 strain is lower than in the BY4742 SIR2+ strain. In addition, relating this work to previous studies of subtelomeric sequences in other organisms would make the discussion more interesting.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: in this manuscript, Hansen and co-authors investigated the role of R-coils in the multimerization and ice nucleation activity of PbINP, an ice nucleation protein identified in Pseudomonas borealis. The results of this work suggest that the length, localization, and amino acid composition of R-coils are crucial for the formation of PbINP multimers.

Strengths: The authors use a rational mutagenesis approach to identify the role of the length, localisation, and amino acid composition of R-coils in ice nucleation activity. Based on these results, the authors hypothesize a multimerization model. Overall, this is a multidisciplinary work that provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying ice nucleation activity.

Weaknesses: Several parts of the work appear cryptic and unsuitable for non-expert readers. The results of this work should be better described and presented.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The findings of Bo Yu and colleagues titled "Identification of fallopian tube microbiota and its association with ovarian cancer: a prospective study of intraoperative swab collections from 187 patients" describes the identification of the fallopian tube microbiome and relationship with ovarian cancer. The studies are highly rigorous obtaining specimens from the fallopian tube, ovarian surfaces, paracolic gutter of patients of known or suspected ovarian cancer or benign tumor patients. The investigators took great care to ensure there was no or limited contamination including test the surgical suite air, as the test locations are from low abundance microbiota. The findings provide evidence that the microbiota in the fallopian tube, especially in ovarian cancer has similarities to gut microbial communities. This is a potentially novel observation.

The studies investigate the microbiome of >1000 swabs from 81 ovarian cancer and 106 non-cancer patients. The sites collected are low biomass microbiota making the study particularly challenging. The studies provide descriptive evidence that the ovarian cancer fallopian tube microbiota contain species that are similar to the gut microbiota. In contrast the fallopian tube microbiota of non-cancer patients that exhibit more similarity to the uterine/cervical microbiota. This may be a relevant observation but is highly descriptive with limited insights on the functional relevance.

The data indicate the presence of low biomass FT microbiota. The findings support the existence of FT microbiota in ovarian cancer that appears to be related to gut microbial species. While interesting, there is no insights on how and why these microbial species are found in the FT. The studies only identify the species but there is no transcriptomic analysis to provide an indication on whether the bacteria are activating DNA damage pathways. This is an interesting observation that requires more insights to address how these bacteria reach the fallopian tube and a related question is whether these bacteria are found in the peritoneum.

An additional concern is whether these data can be used to develop biomarkers of disease and early detection of disease. can the investigators detect the ovarian cancer FT microbiota in cervical/vaginal secretions? That may yield more significant insights for the field.

David Lynch described the method from Frank Daniel (1926-1996) of the American Film Institute and Dean of advanced film studies who taught students to plot out their screenplays using 3 x 5" index cards. One would write out a total of 70 cards each with scene headings. Once fleshed out, one would have a complete screenplay.

via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yngWNmouhP0

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The presented structure of the ToxR and ToxS periplasmic domain complex reveals the formation of a bile binding pocket at the interface, stabilized in the heterodimer structure. In addition to the structural data, a series of biophysical interaction experiments were performed between sodium cholate and the ToxR periplasmic domain alone, as well as the ToxR-ToxS complex, to characterize the bile binding.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this study, the authors developed and tested a novel framework for extracting muscle synergies. The approach aims at removing some limitations and constraints typical of previous approaches used in the field. In particular, the authors propose a mathematical formulation that removes constraints of linearity and couples the synergies to their motor outcome, supporting the concept of functional synergies and distinguishing the task-related performance related to each synergy. While some concepts behind this work were already introduced in recent work in the field, the methodology provided here encapsulates all these features in an original formulation providing a step forward with respect to the currently available algorithms. The authors also successfully demonstrated the applicability of their method to previously available datasets of multi-joint movements.

Preliminary results positively support the scientific soundness of the presented approach and its potential. The added values of the method should be documented more in future work to understand how the presented formulation relates to previous approaches and what novel insights can be achieved in practical scenarios and confirm/exploit the potential of the theoretical findings.

In their revision, the authors have implemented major revisions and improved their paper. The work was already of good quality and now it has improved further. The authors were able to successfully:<br /> - improve the clarity of the writing (e.g.: better explaining the rationale and the aims of the paper);<br /> - extend the clarification of some of the key novel concepts introduced in their work, like the redundant synergies;<br /> - show a scenario in which their approach might be useful for increasing the understanding of motor control in patients with respect to traditional algorithms such as NMF. In particular, their example illustrates why considering the task space is a fundamental step forward when extracting muscle synergies, improving the practical and physiological interpretation of the results.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, Picard et al. propose a Facial Expression Pain Signature (FEPS) as a distinctive marker of pain processing in the brain. Specifically, they attempt to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to predict facial expressions associated with painful heat stimulation.

The main strengths of the manuscript are that it is built on an extensive foundation of work from the research group, and that experience can be observed in the analysis of fMRI data and the development of the machine learning model. Additionally, it provides a comparative account of the similarities of the FEPS with other proposed pain signatures. The main weaknesses of the manuscript are the absence of a proper control condition to assess the specificity of the facial pain expressions, a few relevant omissions in the methodology regarding the original analysis of the data and its purpose, and a biased interpretation of the results.

I believe that the authors partially succeed in their aims, as described in the introduction, which are to assess the association between pain facial expression and existing pain-relevant brain signatures, and to develop a predictive brain activation model of the facial responses to painful thermal stimulation. However, I believe that there is a clear difference between those aims and the claim of the title, and that the interpretation of the results needs to be more rigorous.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):