Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In this work the authors propose a new regulatory role for one the most abundant circRNAs, circHIPK3, by showing that it interacts with an RNA binding protein (IGF2BP2) and, by sequestering it, it regulates the expression of hundreds of genes containing a sequence (11-mer motif) in their untranslated regions (3'-UTR). This sequence is also present in circHIPK3, precisely where IGF2BP2 binds. The study further focuses on one specific case, the STAT3 gene, whose mRNA product is downregulated upon circHIPK3 depletion apparently through sequestering IGF2BP2, which otherwise binds to and stabilizes STAT3 mRNA. The study presents mechanistic insight into the interactions, sequence motifs, and stoichiometries of the molecules involved in this new mode of regulation. Altogether, this new mechanism seems to underlie the effects of circHIPK3 in cancer progression.

Strengths:<br /> The authors show mechanistic insight into a proposed novel "sponging" function of circHIPK3 which is not mediated by sequestering miRNAs but rather by a specific RNA binding protein (IGF2BP2). They address the stoichiometry of the molecules involved in the interaction, which is a critical aspect that is frequently overlooked in this type of study. They provide both genome-wide analysis and a specific case (STAT3) that is relevant for cancer progression.

Weaknesses:<br /> One of the central conclusions of the manuscript, namely that circHIPK3 sequesters IGF2BP2 and thereby regulates target mRNAs, lacks more direct experimental evidence such as rescue experiments where both species are simultaneously knocked down. CircRNA overexpression lacks a demonstration of circularization efficiencies. There seem to be contradictory effects of circHIPK3 and STAT3 depletion in cancer progression, namely that while circHIPK3 is frequently downregulated in cancer, circHIPK3 downregulation in this study leads to downregulation of STAT3. This does not seem to fit the fact that STAT3 is normally activated in a wide diversity of cancers and is positively associated with cell proliferation. The result is neither consistent with the fact that circHIPK3 expression positively correlates with good clinical outcomes. Overall, the authors have achieved some of their aims but additional controls would be advisable to fully support their conclusions.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Okholm and colleagues identified an interesting new instance of ceRNA involving a circular RNA. The data are clearly presented and support the conclusions. Quantification of the copy number of circRNA and quantification of the protein were performed, and this is important to support the ceRNA mechanism.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In Okholm et al., the authors evaluate the functional impact of circHIPK3 in bladder cancer cells. By knocking it down and performing an RNA-seq analysis, the authors found thousands of deregulated genes that look unaffected by miRNAs sponging function and that are, instead, enriched for an 11-mer motif. Further investigations showed that the 11-mer motif is shared with the circHIPK3 and able to bind the IGF2BP2 protein. The authors validated the binding of IGF2BP2 and demonstrated that IGF2BP2 KD antagonizes the effect of circHIPK3 KD and leads to the upregulation of genes containing the 11-mer. Among the genes affected by circHIPK3 KD and IGF2BP2 KD (resulting in downregulation and upregulation, respectively) the authors found the STAT3 gene. This was accompanied by consistent concomitant upregulation of one of its targets, TP53. The authors propose a mechanism of competition between circHIPK3 and IGF2BP2 triggered by IGF2BP2 nucleation, potentially via phase separation.

Strengths:<br /> The number of circRNAs continues to drastically grow; however, the field lacks detailed molecular investigations. The presented work critically addresses some of the major pitfalls in the field of circRNAs and there has been a careful analysis of aspects frequently poorly investigated. The time-point KD followed by RNA-seq, investigation of the miRNAs-sponge function of circHIPK3, identification of 11-mer motif, identification, and validation of IGF2BP2, and the analysis of copy number ratio between circHIPK3 and IGF2BP2 in assessing the potential ceRNA mode of action have been extensively explored and, comprehensively are convincing.

Weaknesses:<br /> In some parts, the manuscript lacks appropriate internal controls (eg: comparison with normal bladder cells, linear transcript measurements upon the KD, RIP internal controls/ WB analysis, etc), statistical analysis and significance (in some qPCRs), exhaustive description in the methods of microscopy and image analysis, western blot, and a separate section of cell lines used. The use of certain cell lines bladder cancer cells vs non-bladder cells in some experiments for the purpose of the study is also unclear.

Overall, the presented study adds new knowledge in describing circHIPK3 function, its capability to regulate some downstream genes and its interaction and competition for IGF2BP2. However, whereas the experimental part appears technically logical, it remains unclear the overall goal of this study and the final conclusions. The mechanism of condensation proposed, although interesting and encouraging, would need further experimental support and information, especially in the context of cancer.

In summary, this study is a promising step forward in the comprehension of the functional role of circHIPK3. These data could possibly help to better understand the circHIPK3 role in cancer.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors describe the dynamic distribution of laminin in the olfactory system and forebrain. Using immunohistochemistry and transgenic lines, they found that the olfactory system and adjacent brain tissues are enveloped by BMs from the earliest stages of olfactory system assembly. They also found that laminin deposits follow the axonal trajectory of axons. They performed a functional analysis of the sly mutant to analyse the function of laminin γ1 in the development of the zebrafish olfactory system. Their study revealed that laminin enables the shape and position of placodes to be maintained late in the face of major morphogenetic movements in the brain, and its absence promotes the local entry of sensory axons into the brain and their navigation towards the olfactory bulb.

Strengths:<br /> -They showed that in the sly mutants, no BM staining of laminin and Nidogen could be detected around the OP and the brain. The authors then elegantly used electron microscopy to analyse the ultrastructure of the border between the OP and the brain in control and sly mutant conditions.<br /> -To analyse the role of laminin γ1-dependent BMs in OP coalescence, the authors used the cluster size of Tg(neurog1:GFP)+ OP cells at 22 hpf as a marker. They found that the mediolateral dimension increased specifically in the mutants. However, proliferation did not seem to be affected, although apoptosis appeared to increase slightly at a later stage. This increase could therefore be due to a dispersal of cells in the OP. To test this hypothesis, the authors then analysed the cell trajectories and extracted 3D mean square displacements (MSD), a measure of the volume explored by a cell in a given period of time. Their conclusion indicates that although brain cell movements are increased in the absence of BM during coalescence phases, overall OP cell movements occur within normal parameters and allow OPs to condense into compact neuronal clusters in sly mutants. The authors also analysed the dimensions of the clusters composed of OMP+ neurons. Their results show an increase in cluster size along the dorso-ventral axis. These results were to be expected since, compared with BM, early neurog1+ neurons should compact along the medio-lateral axis, and those that are OMP+ essentially along the dorso-ventral axis. In addition to the DV elongation of OP tissue, the authors show the existence of isolated and ectopic (misplaced) YFP+ cells in sly mutants.<br /> -To understand the origin of these phenotypes, the authors analysed the dynamic behaviour of brain cells and OPs during forebrain flexion. The authors then quantitatively measured brain versus OPs in the sly mutant and found that the OP-brain boundary was poorly defined in the sly mutant compared with the control. Once again, the methods (cell tracks, brain size, and proliferation/apoptosis, and the shape of the brain/OP boundary) are elegant but the results were expected.<br /> -They then analysed the dynamic behaviour of the axon using live imaging. Thus, olfactory axon migration is drastically impaired in sly mutants, demonstrating that Laminin γ1-dependent BMs are essential for the growth and navigation of axons from the OP to the olfactory bulb.<br /> -The authors therefore performed a quantitative analysis of the loss of function of Laminin γ1. They propose that the BM of the OP prevents its deformation in response to mechanical forces generated by morphogenetic movements of the neighbouring brain.

Weaknesses:<br /> - The authors did not analyse neurog1 + axonal migration at the level of the single cell and instead made a global analysis. An analysis at the cell level would strengthen their hypotheses.<br /> - Rescue experiments by locally inducing Laminin expression would have strengthened the paper.<br /> -The paper lacks clarity between the two neuronal populations described (early EONs and late OSNs).<br /> -The authors quantitatively measured brain versus OPs in the sly mutant and found that the OP-brain boundary was poorly defined in the sly mutant compared with the control. Once again, the methods (cell tracks, brain size, proliferation/apoptosis, and the shape of the brain/OP boundary) are elegant but the results were expected.<br /> - A missing point in the paper is the effect of Laminin γ1 on the migration of cranial NCCs that interact with OP cells. The authors could have analysed the dynamic distribution of neural crest cells in the sly mutant.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This manuscript addresses the role of the extracellular matrix in olfactory development. Despite the importance of these extracellular structures, the specific roles and activities of matrix molecules are still poorly understood. Here, the authors combine live imaging and genetics to examine the role of laminin gamma 1 in multiple steps of olfactory development. The work comprises a descriptive but carefully executed, quantitative assessment of the olfactory phenotypes resulting from loss of laminin gamma. Overall, this is a constructive advance in our understanding of extracellular matrix contributions to olfactory development, with a well-written Discussion with relevance to many other systems.

Strengths:<br /> The strengths of the manuscript are in the approaches: the authors have combined live imaging, careful quantitative analyses, and molecular genetics. The work presented takes advantage of many zebrafish tools including mutants and transgenics to directly visualize the laminin extracellular matrix in living embryos during the developmental process.

Weaknesses:<br /> The weaknesses are primarily in the presentation of some of the imaging data. In certain cases, it was not straightforward to evaluate the authors' interpretations and conclusions based on the single confocal sections included in the manuscript. For example, it was difficult to assess the authors' interpretation of when and how laminin openings arise around the olfactory placode and brain during olfactory axon guidance.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This is a beautifully presented paper combining live imaging and analysis of mutant phenotypes to elucidate the role of laminin γ1-dependent basement membranes in the development of the zebrafish olfactory placode. The work is clearly illustrated and carefully quantified throughout. There are some very interesting observations based on the analysis of wild-type, laminin γ1, and foxd3 mutant embryos. The authors demonstrate the importance of a Laminin γ1-dependent basement membrane in olfactory placode morphogenesis, and in establishing and maintaining both boundaries and neuronal connections between the brain and the olfactory system. There are some very interesting observations, including the identification of different mechanisms for axons to cross basement membranes, either by taking advantage of incompletely formed membranes at early stages, or by actively perforating the membrane at later ones.

This is a valuable and important study but remains quite descriptive. In some cases, hypotheses for mechanisms are stated but are not tested further. For example, the authors propose that olfactory axons must actively disrupt a basement membrane to enter the brain and suggest alternative putative mechanisms for this, but these are not tested experimentally. In addition, the authors propose that the basement membrane of the olfactory placode acts to resist mechanical forces generated by the morphogenetic movement of the developing brain, and thus to prevent passive deformation of the placode, but this is not tested anywhere, for example by preventing or altering the brain movements in the laminin γ1 mutant.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Most amino acids are stereoisomers in the L-enantiomer, but natural D-serine has also been detected in mammals and its levels shown to be connected to a number of different pathologies. Here, the authors convincingly show that D-serine is transported in the kidney by the neutral amino acid transporter ASCT2 and as a non-canonical substrate for the sodium-coupled monocarboxylate transporter SMCTs. Although both transport D-serine, this important study further shows in a mouse model for acute kidney injury that ASCT2 has the dominant role.

Strengths:<br /> The paper combines proteomics, animal models, ex vivo transport analyses, and in vitro transport assays using purified components. The exhaustive methods employed provide compelling evidence that both transporters can translocate D-serine in the kidney.

Weakness:<br /> In the model for acute kidney injury, the SMCTs proteins were not showing a significant change in expression levels and were rather analysed based on other, circumstantial evidence. Although its clear SMCTs can transport D-serine its physiological role is less obvious compared to ASCT2.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript "A multi-hierarchical approach reveals D-1 serine as a hidden substrate of sodium-coupled monocarboxylate transporters" by Wiriyasermkul et al. is a resubmission of a manuscript, which focused first on the proteomic analysis of apical membrane isolated from mouse kidney with early Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury (IRI), a well-known acute kidney injury (AKI) model. In the second part, the transport of D-serine by Asct2, Smct1, and Smct2 has been characterized in detail in different model systems, such as transfected cells and proteoliposomes.

Strengths:<br /> A major problem with the first submission was the explanation of the link between the two parts of the manuscript: it was not very clear why the focus on Asct2, Smct1, and Smct2 was a consequence of the proteomic analysis. In the present version of the manuscript, the authors have focused on the expression of membrane transporters in the proteome analysis, thus making the reason for studying Asct2, Smct1, and Smct2 transporters more clear. In addition, the authors used 2D-HPLC to measure plasma and urinary enantiomers of 20 amino acids in plasma and urine samples from sham and Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury (IRI) mice. The results of this analysis demonstrated the value of D-serine as a potential marker of renal injury. These changes have greatly improved the manuscript and made it more convincing.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The main objective of this work has been to delve into the mechanisms underlying the increment of D-serine in serum, as a marker of renal injury.

Strengths:<br /> With a multi-hierarchical approach, the work shows that Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in the kidney causes a specific increment in renal reabsorption of D-serine that, at least in part, is due to the increased expression of the apical transporter ASCT2. In this way, the authors revealed that SMCT1 also transports D-serine.

The manuscript also supports that increased expression of ASCT2, even together with the parallel decreased expression of SMCT1, in renal proximal tubules underlies the increased reabsorption of D-serine responsible for the increment of this enantiomer in serum in a murine model of Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury.

Weaknesses:<br /> Remains to be clarified whether ASCT2 has substantial stereospecificity in favor of D- versus L-serine to sustain a ~10-fold decrease in the ratio D-serine/L-serine in the urine of mice under Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury (IRI).<br /> It is not clear how the increment in the expression of ASCT2, in parallel with the decreased expression of SMCT1, results in increased renal reabsorption of D-serine in IRI.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary. The authors goal was to map the neural circuitry underlying cold sensitive contraction in Drosophila. The circuitry underlying most sensory modalities has been characterized but noxious cold sensory circuitry has not been well studied. The authors achieve their goal and map out sensory and post-sensory neurons involved in this behavior.

Strengths. The manuscript provides convincing evidence for sensory and post sensory neurons involved in noxious cold sensitive behavior. They use both connectivity data and functional data to identify these neurons. This work is a clear advance in our understanding of noxious cold behavior. The experiments are done with a high degree of experimental rigor.

Positive comments

-Campari is nicely done to map cold responsive neurons, although it doesn't give data on individual neurons.

-Chrimson and TNT experiments are nicely done.

-Cold temperature activates basin neurons, it's a solid and convincing result.

Weaknesses. Among the few weaknesses in this manuscript is the failure to trace the circuit from sensory neuron to motor neuron; and to ignore analysis of the muscles driving, cold induced contraction. Authors also need to elaborate more on the novel aspects of their work in the introduction or abstract.

Major comments.

-Class three sensory neuron connectivity is known, and role in cold response is known (turner 16, 18). Need to make it clearer what the novelty of the experiments are.

-Why focus on premotor neurons in mechano nociceptive pathways? Why not focus on PMNs innervating longitudinal muscles, likely involved in longitudinal larval contraction? Especially since chosen premotor neurons have only weak effects on cold induced contraction?

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Patel et al perform the analysis of neurons in a somatosensory network involved in responses to noxious cold in Drosophila larvae. Using a combination of behavioral experiments, Calcium imaging, optogenetics, and synaptic connectivity analysis in the Drosophila larval they assess the function of circuit elements in the somatosensory network downstream of multimodal somatosensory neurons involved in innocuous and noxious stimuli sensing and probe their function in noxious cold processing, Consistent with their previous findings they find the multidendritic class III neurons, to be the key cold sensing neurons that are both required and sufficient for the CT behaviors response (shown to evoked by noxious cold). They further investigate the downstream neurons identified based on literature and connectivity from EM at different stages of sensory processing characterize the different phenotypes upon activating/silencing those neurons and monitor their responses to noxious cold. The work reveals diverse phenotypes for the different neurons studied and provides the groundwork for understanding how information is processed in the nervous system from sensory input to motor output and how information from different modalities is processed by neuronal networks. However, at times the writing could be clearer and some results interpretations more rigorous.

Specific comments

1) In Figure 1 -supplement 6D-F (Cho co-activation)

The authors find that Ch neurons are cold sensitive and required for cold nociceptive behavior but do not facilitate behavioral responses induced but CIII neurons

The authors show that coactivating mdIII and cho inhibits the CT (a typically observed cold-induced behavioral response) in the second part of the stimulation period, while Cho was required for cold-induced CT. Different levels of activation of md III and Cho (different light intensities) could bring some insights into the observed phenotypes upon Cho manipulation as different levels activate different downstream networks that could correspond to different stimuli. Also, it would be interesting to activate chordotonal during exposure to cold to determine how a behavioral response to cold is affected by the activation of chordotonal sensory neurons.

2) Throughout the paper the co-activation experiments investigate whether co-activating the different candidate neurons and md III neurons facilitates the md III-induced CT response. However, the cold noxious stimuli will presumably activate different neurons downstream than optogenetic activation of MdIII and thus can reveal more accurately the role of the different candidate neurons in facilitating cold nociception.

3) Use of blue lights in behavioral and imaging experiments

Strong Blue and UV have been shown to activate MDIV neurons (Xiang, Y., Yuan, Q., Vogt, N. et al. Light-avoidance-mediating photoreceptors tile the Drosophila larval body wall. Nature 468, 921-926 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09576) and some of the neurons tested receive input from MdIV. In their experiments, the authors used blue light to optogenetically activate CDIII neurons and then monitored Calcium responses in Basin neurons, premotor neurons, and ascending neurons and UV light is necessary for photoconversion in Campari Experiments. Therefore, some of the neurons monitored could be activated by blue light and not cdIII activation. Indeed, responses of Basin-4 neurons can be observed in the no ATR condition (Fig 3HI) and quite strong responses of DnB neurons. (Figure 6E) How do authors discern that the effects they see on the different neurons are indeed due to cold nociception and not the synergy of cold and blue light responses could especially be the case for DNB that could have in facilitating the response to cold in a multisensory context (where mdIV are activated by light). In addition, the silencing of DNB neurons during cold stimulation does not seem to give very robust phenotypes (no significant CT decrease compared to empty GAL4 control).

It would be important to for example show that even in the absence of blue light the DNB facilitates the mdIII activation or cold-induced CT by using red light and Chrimson for example or TrpA activation (for coactivation with md III)

Alternatively, in some other cases, the phenotype upon co-activation could be inhibited by blue light (e.g. chair-1 (Figure 5 H-I))

More generally, given the multimodal nature of stimuli activating mdIV , MdIII (and Cho) and their shared downstream circuitry it is important to either control for using the blue light in these stimuli or take into account the presence of the stimulus in interpreting the results as the coactivation of for example Cho and mdIII using blue lights also could activate mdIV (and downstream neurons, alter the state of the network that could inhibit the md III induced CT responses

Assessing the differences in behavioral phenotypes in the different conditions could give an idea of the influence of combining different modalities in these assays. For example, did the authors observe any other behaviors upon co-activation of MDIII and Cho (at the expense of CT in the second part of the stimulation) or did the larvae resume crawling? Blue light typically induces reorientation behavior. What about when co-activating mdIII and Basin-4?

Using Chrimson and red light or TrpA in some key experiments e.g. with Cho, Basin-4, and DNB would clarify the implication of these neurons in cold nociception

4) Basins<br /> - Page 17 line 442-3 "Neural silencing of all Basin (1-4) neurons, using two independent driver lines (R72F11GAL4 and R57F07GAL4)<br /> Did the authors check the expression profile of the R57F07 line that they use to probe "all basins"? The expression profile published previously (Ohyama et al, 2015, extended data) shows one basin neuron (identified as basin-4 ) and some neurons in the brain lobes. Also, the split GAL4 that labels Basin-4 (SS00740) is the intersection between R72F11 and R57F07 neurons. Thus the R57F07 likely labels Basin-4 and if that is the case the data in Figure 2 9 and supplement) and Figure 3 related to this driver line, should be annotated as Basin-4, and the results and their interpretation modified to take into account the different phenotypes for all basins and Basin-4 neurons

Page 19 l. 521-525 I am confused by these sentences as the authors claim that Basin-4 showed reduced Calcium responses upon repetitive activation of CDIII md neurons but then they say they exhibit sensitization. Looking at the plots in FIG 3 F-I the Basin-4 responses upon repeated activation seem indeed to decrease on the second repetition compared to the first. What is the sensitization the authors refer to?

On Page 47-In this section of the discussion, the authors emit an interesting hypothesis that the Basin-1 neuron could modulate the gain of behavioral responses. While this is an interesting idea, I wonder what would be the explanation for the finding that co-activation of Cho and MDIII does not facilitate cold nociceptive responses. Would activation of Basin-1 facilitate the cold response in different contexts (in addition to CH0-mediated stimuli?

Page 48 Thus the implication of the inhibitory network in cold processing should be better contextualized

The authors explain the difference in the lower basin-2 Ca- response to Cold/ mdIII activation (compared to Basin-4) despite stronger connectivity, due a stronger inputs from inhibitory neurons to Basin-2 (compared to Basin-4). The previously described inhibitory neurons that synapse onto Basin-2 receive rather a small fraction of inputs from the class III sensory neurons. The differences in response to cold could be potentially assigned to the activation of the inhibitory neurons by the cold-sensing cho- neurons. However, that cannot explain the differences in responses induced by class III neurons. Do the authors refer to additional inhibitory neurons that would receive significant input from MdIII?

Alternative explanations could exist for this difference in activation: electrical synapses from mdII I onto Basin-4, and by stronger inputs from mdIV (compared to Basin-2 in the case of responses to Cold stimulus (Cold induces responses in md IV sensory neurons). Different subtypes of CD III may differentially respond to cold and the cold-sensing ones could synapse preferentially on basin-4 etc.

5) A00c<br /> Page 26 Figure 4F-I line While Goro may not be involved in cold nociception the A00c (and A05q) seems to be.<br /> A00c could convey information to other neurons other than Goro and thus be part of a pathway for cold-induced CT.

6) Page 31 766-768 the conclusion that "premotor function is required for and can facilitate cold nociception" seems odd to stress as one would assume that some premotor neurons would be involved in controlling the behavioral responses to a stimulus. It would be more pertinent in the summary to specify which premotor neurons are involved and what is their function

7) There are several Split GAL4 used in the study (with transgenes inserted in attP40 et attP2 site). A recent study points to a mutation related toattP40 that can have an effect on muscle function: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9750024/. The controls used in behavioral experiments do not contain the attP40 site. It would be important to check a control genotype bearing an attP40 site and characterize the different parameters of the CT behavior to cold and take this into account in interpreting the results of the experiments using the Split-GAL4 lines

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors follow up on prior studies where they have argued for the existence of cold nociception in Drosophila larvae. In the proposed pathway, mechanosensitive Class III multidendritic neurons are the noxious cold responding sensory cells. The current study attempts to explore the potential roles of second and third order neurons, based on information of the Class III neuron synaptic outputs that have been obtained from the larval connectome.

Strengths:

The major strength of the manuscript is the detailed discussion of the second and third order neurons that are downstream of the mechanosensory Class III multidendritic neurons. These will be useful in further studies of gentle touch mechanosensation and mechanonociception both of which rely on sensory input from these cells. Calcium imaging experiments on Class III activation with optogenetics support the wiring diagram.

Weaknesses:

The scientific premise is that a full body contraction in larvae that are exposed to noxious cold is a sensorimotor behavioral pathway. This premise is, to start with, questionable. A common definition of behavior is a set of "orderly movements with recognizable and repeatable patterns of activity produced by members of a species (Baker et al., 2001)." In the case of nociception behaviors, the patterns of movement are typically thought to play a protective role and to protect from potential tissue damage.

Does noxious cold elicit a set of orderly movements with a recognizable and repeatable pattern in larvae? Can the patterns of movement that are stimulated by noxious cold allow the larvae to escape harm? Based on the available evidence, the answer to both questions is seemingly no. In response to noxious cold stimulation many, if not all, of the muscles in the larva, simultaneously contract (Turner et al., 2016), and as a result the larva becomes stationary. In response to cold, the larva is literally "frozen" in place and it is incapable of moving away. This incapacitation by cold is the antithesis of what one might expect from a behavior that protects the animals from harm.

Extensive literature has investigated the physiological responses of insects to cold (reviewed in Overgaard and MacMillan, 2017). In numerous studies of insects across many genera (excluding cold adapted insects such as snow flies), exposure to very cold temperatures quickly incapacitates the animal and induces a state that is known as a chill coma. During a chill coma, the insect becomes immobilized by the cold exposure, but if the exposure to cold is very brief the insect can often be revived without apparent damage. Indeed, it is common practice for many laboratories that use adult Drosophila for studies of behavior to use a brief chilling on ice as a form of anesthesia because chilling is less disruptive to subsequent behaviors than the more commonly used carbon dioxide anesthesia. If flies were to perceive cold as a noxious nociceptive stimulus, then this "chill coma" procedure would likely be disruptive to behavioral studies but is not. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that larval sensation of "noxious cold" is aversive.

The insect chill coma literature has investigated the effects of extreme cold on the physiology of nerves and muscles and the consensus view of the field is that the paralysis that results from cold is due to complex and combined action of direct effects of cold on muscle and on nerves (Overgaard and MacMillan, 2017). Electrophysiological measurements of muscles and neurons find that they are initially depolarized by cold, and after prolonged cold exposure they are unable to maintain potassium homeostasis and this eventually inhibits the firing of action potentials (Overgaard and MacMillan, 2017). The very small thermal capacitance of a Drosophila larva means that its entire neuromuscular system will be quickly exposed to the effect of cold in the behavioral assays under consideration here. It would seem impossible to disentangle the emergent properties of a complex combination of effects on physiology (including neuronal, glial, and muscle homeostasis) on any proposed sensorimotor transformation pathway.

Nevertheless, the manuscript before us makes a courageous attempt at attempting this. A number of GAL4 drivers tested in the paper are found to affect parameters of contraction behavior (CT) in cold exposed larvae in silencing experiments. However, notably absent from all of the silencing experiments are measurements of larval mobility following cold exposure. Thus, it is not known from the study if these manipulations are truly protecting the larvae from paralysis following cold exposure, or if they are simply reducing the magnitude of the initial muscle contraction that occurs immediately following cold (ie reducing CT). The strongest effect of silencing occurs with the 19-12-GAL4 driver which targets Class III neurons (but is not completely specific to these cells).

Optogenetic experiments for Class III neurons relying on the 19-12-GAL4 driver combined with a very strong optogenetic acuator (ChETA) show the CT behavior that was reported in prior studies. It should be noted that this actuator drives very strong activation, and other studies with milder optogenetic stimulation of Class III neurons have shown that these cells produce behavioral responses that resemble gentle touch responses (Tsubouchi et al 2012 and Yan et al 2013). As well, these neurons express mechanoreceptor ion channels such as NompC and Rpk that are required for gentle touch responses. The latter makes the reported Calcium responses to cold difficult to interpret in light of the fact that the strong muscle contractions driven by cold may actually be driving mechanosensory responses in these cells (ie through deformation of the mechanosensitive dendrites). Are the cIII calcium signals still observed in a preparation where cold induced muscle contractions are prevented?

A major weakness of the study is that none of the second or third order neurons (that are downstream of CIII neurons) are found to trigger the CT behavioral responses even when strongly activated with the ChETA actuator (Figure 2 Supplement 2). These findings raise major concerns for this and prior studies and it does not support the hypothesis that the CIII neurons drive the CT behaviors.

Later experiments in the paper that investigate strong CIII activation (with ChETA) in combination with other second and third order neurons does support the idea activating those neurons can facilitate body-wide muscle contractions. But many of the co-activated cells in question are either repeated in each abdominal neuromere or they project to cells that are found all along the ventral nerve cord, so it is therefore unsurprising that their activation would contribute to what appears to be a non-specific body-wide activation of muscles along the AP axis. Also, if these neurons are already downstream of the CIII neurons the logic of this co-activation approach is not particularly clear. A more convincing experiment would be to silence the different classes of cells in the context of the optogenetic activation of CIII neurons to test for a block of the effects, a set of experiments that is notably absent from the study.

The authors argument that the co-activation studies support "a population code" for cold nociception is a very optimistic interpretation of a brute force optogenetics approach that ultimately results in an enhancement of a relatively non-specific body-wide muscle convulsion.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Rai1 encodes the transcription factor retinoic acid-induced 1 (RAI1), which regulates expression of factors involved in neuronal development and synaptic transmission. Rai1 haploinsufficiency leads to the monogenic disorder Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS), which is associated with excessive feeding, obesity and intellectual disability. Consistent with findings in human subjects, Rai1+/- mice and mice with conditional deletion of Rai1 in Sim+ neurons, which are abundant in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN), exhibit hyperphagia, obesity and increased adiposity. Furthermore, RAI1-deficient mice exhibit reduced expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a satiety factor essential for the central control of energy balance. Notably, overexpression of BDNF in PVN of RAI1-deficient mice mitigated their obesity, implicating this neurotrophin in the metabolic dysfunction these animals exhibit. In this follow up study, Javed et al. interrogated the necessity of RAI1 in BDNF+ neurons promoting metabolic health.

Consistent with previous reports, the authors observed reduced BDNF expression in hypothalamus of Rai1+/- mice. Moreover, proteomics analysis indicated impairment in neurotrophin signaling in the mutants. Selective deletion of Rai1 in BDNF+ neurons in the brain during development resulted in increased body weight, fat mass and reduced locomotor activity and energy expenditure without changes in food intake. There was also a robust effect on glycemic control, with mutants exhibiting glucose intolerance. Selective depletion of RAI1 in BDNF+ neurons in PVN in adult mice also resulted in increased body weight, reduced locomotor activity and glucose intolerance without affecting food intake. Blunting RAI1 activity also leads to increases and decreases the inhibitory tone and intrinsic excitability, respectively, of BDNF+ neurons in the PVN.

Overall, the experiments are well designed and multidisciplinary approaches are employed to demonstrate that RAI1 deficits in BDNF+ neurons diminish hypothalamic BDNF signaling and produce metabolic dysfunction. The most significant advance relative to previous reports is the finding from electrophysiological studies showing that blunting RAI1 activity leads to increases and decreases the inhibitory tone and intrinsic excitability, respectively, of BDNF+ neurons in the PVN. Furthermore, that intact RAI1 function is required in BDNF+ neurons for the regulation of glucose homeostasis.

Depleting RAI1 in BDNF+ neurons had a robust effect compromising glycemic control while playing a lesser part driving deficits in energy balance regulation. Accordingly, both global central depletion of Rai1 in BDNF+ neurons during development and deletion of Rai1 in BDNF+ neurons in the adult PVN elicited modest effects on body weight (less than 18% increase) and did not affect food intake. This contrasts with mice with selective Bdnf deletion in the adult PVN, which are hyperphagic and dramatically obese (90% heavier than controls). Therefore, the results suggest that deficits in RAI1 in PVN or the whole brain only moderately affect BDNF actions influencing energy homeostasis and that other signaling cascades and neuronal populations play a more prominent role driving the phenotypes observed in Rai1+/- mice, which are hyperphagic and 95% heavier than controls. The results from the proteomic analysis of hypothalamic tissue of Rai1 mutant mice and controls could be useful in generating alternative hypotheses.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

The paper by Majeed et al has a valuable and worthwhile aim: to provide a set of tools to standardize the quantification of synapses using fluorescent markers in the nematode C. elegans. Using current approaches, the identification of synapses using fluorescent markers is tedious and subject to significant inter-experimenter variability. Majeed et al successfully developed and validated a computational pipeline called "WormPsyQi" that overcomes some of these obstacles and will be a powerful resource for many C. elegans neurobiologists.

Strengths:

The computational pipeline is rigorously validated and shown to accurately quantitate fluorescent puncta, at least as well as human experimenters. The inclusion of a mask - a region of interest defined by a cytoplasmic marker - is a powerful and useful approach. Users can take advantage of one of four pre-trained neural networks, or train their own. The software is freely available and appears to be user-friendly. A series of rigorous experiments demonstrate the utility of the pipeline for measuring differences in the number of synaptic puncta between sexes and across developmental stages. Neuron-to-neuron heterogeneity in patterns of synaptic growth during development is convincingly demonstrated. Weaknesses and caveats are realistically discussed.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:

This paper nicely introduces WormPsyQi, an imaging analysis pipeline that effectively quantifies synaptically localized fluorescent signals in C. elegans through high-throughput automation. This toolkit is particularly valuable for the analysis of densely packed regions in 3D space, such as the nerve ring. The authors applied WormPsyQi to various aspects, including the examination of sexually dimorphic synaptic connectivity, presynaptic markers in eight head neurons, five GRASP reporters, electrical synapses, the enteric nervous system, and developmental synapse comparisons. Furthermore, they validated WormPsyQi's accuracy by comparing its results to manual analysis.

Strengths:

Overall, the experiments are well done, and their toolkit demonstrates significant potential and offers a valuable resource to the C. elegans community. This will expand the range of possibilities for studying synapses in the central nervous system in C. elegans.

Weaknesses:

1. The authors effectively validated sexually dimorphic synaptic connectivity by comparing the synapse puncta numbers of PHB>AVA, PHA>AVG, PHB>AVG, and ADL>AVA. However, these differences appear to be quite robust. Knowing how well WormPsyQi can detect more subtle changes at the synapses, such as 10-20% changes in puncta number and fluorescence intensity, will require further study.

2. The authors mentioned that having a cytoplasmic reporter in the background of the synaptic reporter enhanced performance. However, comparative results with and without cytoplasmic reporters, particularly for scenarios involving dim signals or densely distributed signals, are not provided, making it difficult to rigorously assess the importance of this step.

3. In some cases, the authors note discrepancies between WormPsyQi and human quantification. While they provide some potential explanations for these, the areas of discrepancy are not always highlighted in the images. This may make it difficult for users to know which types of signals are or are not well-suited for analysis by WormPsyQi.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

In this manuscript, the authors present a new automated image analysis pipeline named WormPsyQi which allows researchers to quantify various parameters of synapses in C. elegans. Using a collection of newly generated transgenic strains in which synaptic proteins are tagged with fluorescent proteins, the authors showed that WormPsyQi can reliably detect puncta of synaptic proteins, and measure several parameters, including puncta number, location, and size.

Strengths:

The image analysis of fluorescently-labeled synaptic (or other types of) puncta pattern requires extensive experience such that one can tell which puncta likely represent bona fide synapse or background noise. The authors showed that WormPsyQi nicely reproduced the quantifications done manually for most of the marker strains they tested. Many researchers conducting such types of quantifications would receive significant benefits in saving their time by utilizing the pipeline developed by the authors. The collections of new markers would also help researchers examine synapse patterning in different neuron types which may have a unique mechanism in synapse assembly and specificity.

Weaknesses:

As the authors note, the limitations that the use of fluorescently-tagged proteins expressed from the concatemeric transgenes directly apply to WormPsyQi. While I appreciate that WormPsyQi could help researchers in doing repetitive, time-consuming tedious quantifications, it remains unclear whether there are particular kinds of quantifications that WormPsyQi handles better than human experimenters.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

This paper presents novel and innovative force measurements of the biophysics of gliding cyanobacteria filaments. These measurements allow for estimates of the resistive force between the cell and substrate and provide potential insight into the motility mechanism of these cells, which remains unknown.

Strengths:

The authors used well-designed microfabricated devices to measure the bending modulus of these cells and to determine the critical length at which the cells buckle. I especially appreciated the way the authors constructed an array of pillars and used it to do 3-point bending measurements and the arrangement the authors used to direct cells into a V-shaped corner in order to examine at what length the cells buckled at. By examining the gliding speed of the cells before buckling events, the authors were able to determine how strongly the buckling length depends on the gliding speed, which could be an indicator of how the force exerted by the cells depends on cell length; however, the authors did not comment on this directly.

Weaknesses:

There were two minor weaknesses in the paper.

First, the authors investigate the buckling of these gliding cells using an Euler beam model. A similar mathematical analysis was used to estimate the bending modulus and gliding force for Myxobacteria (C.W. Wolgemuth, Biophys. J. 89: 945-950 (2005)). A similar mathematical model was also examined in G. De Canio, E. Lauga, and R.E Goldstein, J. Roy. Soc. Interface, 14: 20170491 (2017). The authors should have cited these previous works and pointed out any differences between what they did and what was done before.

The second weakness is that the authors claim that their results favor a focal adhesion-based mechanism for cyanobacterial gliding motility. This is based on their result that friction and adhesion forces correlate strongly. They then conjecture that this is due to more intimate contact with the surface, with more contacts producing more force and pulling the filaments closer to the substrate, which produces more friction. They then claim that a slime-extrusion mechanism would necessarily involve more force and lower friction. Is it necessarily true that this latter statement is correct? (I admit that it could be, but is it a requirement?)

Related to this, the authors use a model with isotropic friction. They claim that this is justified because they are able to fit the cell shapes well with this assumption. How would assuming a non-isotropic drag coefficient affect the shapes? It may be that it does equally well, in which case, the quality of the fits would not be informative about whether or not the drag was isotropic or not.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The paper "Quantifying gliding forces of filamentous cyanobacteria by self-buckling" combines experiments on freely gliding cyanobacteria, buckling experiments using two-dimensional V-shaped corners, and micropipette force measurements with theoretical models to study gliding forces in these organisms. The aim is to quantify these forces and use the results to perhaps discriminate between competing mechanisms by which these cells move. A large data set of possible collision events are analyzed, bucking events evaluated, and critical buckling lengths estimated. A line elasticity model is used to analyze the onset of buckling and estimate the effective (viscous type) friction/drag that controls the dynamics of the rotation that ensues post-buckling. This value of the friction/drag is compared to a second estimate obtained by consideration of the active forces and speeds in freely gliding filaments. The authors find that these two independent estimates of friction/drag correlate with each other and are comparable in magnitude. The experiments are conducted carefully, the device fabrication is novel, the data set is interesting, and the analysis is solid. The authors conclude that the experiments are consistent with the propulsion being generated by adhesion forces rather than slime extrusion. While consistent with the data, this conclusion is inferred.

Summary:

The paper addresses important questions on the mechanisms driving the gliding motility of filamentous cyanobacteria. The authors aim to understand these by estimating the elastic properties of the filaments, and by comparing the resistance to gliding under a) freely gliding conditions, and b) in post-buckled rotational states. Experiments are used to estimate the propulsion force density on freely gliding filaments (assuming over-damped conditions). Experiments are combined with a theoretical model based on Euler beam theory to extract friction (viscous) coefficients for filaments that buckle and begin to rotate about the pinned end. The main results are estimates for the bending stiffness of the bacteria, the propulsive tangential force density, the buckling threshold in terms of the length, and estimates of the resistive friction (viscous drag) providing the dissipation in the system and balancing the active force. It is found that experiments on the two bacterial species yield nearly identical values of 𝑓 (albeit with rather large variations). The authors conclude that the experiments are consistent with the propulsion being generated by adhesion forces rather than slime extrusion.

Strengths of the paper:

The strengths of the paper lie in the novel experimental setup and measurements that allow for the estimation of the propulsive force density, critical buckling length, and effective viscous drag forces for movement of the filament along its contour - the axial (parallel) drag coefficient, and the normal (perpendicular) drag coefficient (I assume this is the case, since the post-buckling analysis assumes the bent filament rotates at a constant frequency). These direct measurements are important for serious analysis and discrimination between motility mechanisms.

Weaknesses:

There are aspects of the analysis and discussion that may be improved. I suggest that the authors take the following comments into consideration while revising their manuscript.

The conclusion that adhesion via focal adhesions is the cause for propulsion rather than slime protrusion is consistent with the experimental results that the frictional drag correlates with propulsion force. At the same time, it is hard to rule out other factors that may result in this (friction) viscous drag - (active) force relationship while still being consistent with slime production. More detailed analysis aiming to discriminate between adhesion vs slime protrusion may be outside the scope of the study, but the authors may still want to elaborate on their inference. It would help if there was a detailed discussion on the differences in terms of the active force term for the focal adhesion-based motility vs the slime motility.

Can the authors comment on possible mechanisms (perhaps from the literature) that indicate how isotropic friction may be generated in settings where focal adhesions drive motility? A key aspect here would probably be estimating the extent of this adhesion patch and comparing it to a characteristic contact area. Can lubrication theory be used to estimate characteristic areas of contact (knowing the radius of the filament, and assuming a height above the substrate)? If the focal adhesions typically cover areas smaller than this lubrication area, it may suggest the possibility that bacteria essentially present a flat surface insofar as adhesion is concerned, leading to a transversely isotropic response in terms of the drag. Of course, we will still require the effective propulsive force to act along the tangent.

I am not sure why the authors mention that the power of the gliding apparatus is not rate-limiting. The only way to verify this would be to put these in highly viscous fluids where the drag of the external fluid comes into the picture as well (if focal adhesions are on the substrate-facing side, and the upper side is subject to ambient fluid drag). Also, the friction referred to here has the form of a viscous drag (no memory effect, and thus not viscoelastic or gel-like), and it is not clear if forces generated by adhesion involve other forms of drag such as chemical friction via temporary bonds forming and breaking. In quasi-static settings and under certain conditions such as the separation of chemical and elastic time scales, bond friction may yield overall force proportional to local sliding velocities.

For readers from a non-fluids background, some additional discussion of the drag forces, and the forms of friction would help. For a freely gliding filament if 𝑓 is the force density (per unit length), then steady gliding with a viscous frictional drag would suggest (as mentioned in the paper) 𝑓 ∼ 𝑣! 𝐿 𝜂∥. The critical buckling length is then dependent on 𝑓 and on 𝐵 the bending modulus. Here the effective drag is defined per length. I can see from this that if the active force is fixed, and the viscous component resulting from the frictional mechanism is fixed, the critical buckling length will not depend on the velocity (unless I am missing something in their argument), since the velocity is not a primitive variable, and is itself an emergent quantity.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

In the presented manuscript, the authors first use structured microfluidic devices with gliding filamentous cyanobacteria inside in combination with micropipette force measurements to measure the bending rigidity of the filaments.

Next, they use triangular structures to trap the bacteria with the front against an obstacle. Depending on the length and rigidity, the filaments buckle under the propulsive force of the cells. The authors use theoretical expressions for the buckling threshold to infer propulsive force, given the measured length and stiffnesses. They find nearly identical values for both species, 𝑓 ∼ (1.0 {plus minus} 0.6) nN∕µm, nearly independent of the velocity.

Finally, they measure the shape of the filament dynamically to infer friction coefficients via Kirchhoff theory. This last part seems a bit inconsistent with the previous inference of propulsive force. Before, they assumed the same propulsive force for all bacteria and showed only a very weak correlation between buckling and propulsive velocity. In this section, they report a strong correlation with velocity, and report propulsive forces that vary over two orders of magnitude. I might be misunderstanding something, but I think this discrepancy should have been discussed or explained.

From a theoretical perspective, not many new results are presented. The authors repeat the well-known calculation for filaments buckling under propulsive load and arrive at the literature result of buckling when the dimensionless number (f L^3/B) is larger than 30.6 as previously derived by Sekimoto et al in 1995 [1] (see [2] for a clamped boundary condition and simulations). Other theoretical predictions for pushed semi-flexible filaments [1-4] are not discussed or compared with the experiments.<br /> Finally, the Authors use molecular dynamics type simulations similar to [2-4] to reproduce the buckling dynamics from the experiments. Unfortunately, no systematic comparison is performed.

[1] K. Sekimoto, N. Mori, K. Tawada and Y. Toyoshima, Phys. Rev. Lett., 1995, 75, 172-175<br /> [2] R. Chelakkot, A. Gopinath, L. Mahadevan and M. F. Hagan, J. R. Soc., Interface, 2014, 11, 20130884.<br /> [3] R. E. Isele-Holder, J. Elgeti and G. Gompper, Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 7181-7190.<br /> [4] R. E. Isele-Holder, J. Jager, G. Saggiorato, J. Elgeti and G. Gompper, Soft Matter, 2016, 12, 8495

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors have made a novel and important effort to distinguish and include different sources of active deformations for fitting C elegans embryo development: cyclic muscle contractions and actomyosion circumferential stresses. The combination and synchronisation of both contributions are, according to the model, responsible for different elongation rates, and can induce bending and torsion deformations, which are a priori not expected from purely contractile forces. The model can be applied to other growth processes in initially cylindrical shapes.

Strengths:<br /> The model allows us to fit and deduce specific growth patterns, frequencies, and locations of contractions that yield the observed axial elongation during the 240 min of the studied process.

The deformation gradient is decomposed according to muscle and actomyosin activity, which can be distinguished and quantified. An energy-transferring process allows for the retrieval of the necessary permanent deformations that embryo development requires.

Weaknesses:<br /> Despite the completeness of the model, the explanation of the methodology needs to be improved. Parameters and quantities are not always explained in the main text and are introduced on some occasions in an ordered manner. This makes the comprehension and deduction of methodology difficult. There are some minor comments that are listed below. The most important points are:

-How are the authors sure that there is a torsional deformation? Without tracking the muscle fibers, bending with respect to different angles for different Zs may yield a shape similar to the one in Figure 6E. Furthermore, it is unclear why the model yields torsion deformation. If material points of actomyosin rings do not change in reference configuration, no helicoidal growth should be happening.

-The triple decomposition F=F_e*G_i*G_0 seems to complicate the expressions of growth and requires the use of angles alpha and beta due to the initial deformation G_0. Why not use a simpler decomposition F=F_e*G, where G contains all contributions from actomyosin and muscle contractions in a material frame? This would avoid considering angles alpha and beta.

The section "Energy transformation and Elongation" is unclear. Indeed, stresses need to relax, otherwise, the removal of muscle and actin activity would send the embryo back to its initial state. However, the rationale behind the energy transfer is not explained. Authors seem to impose W_c=W_r, and from this deduce the necessary actin contraction after muscle relaxation. Why should energy be maintained when muscle relaxes? Which mechanism physically imposes this energy transfer? Muscle contraction could indeed induce elongation if traction forces at the opposite side of the contracting muscle relax. In fact, an alternative approach for obtaining stress relaxation and axial elongation would be converting part of the elastic deformation F_e to a permanent deformation F_p.

-Self contact is ignored. This may well be a shape generator and responsible for bending deformations. The convoluted shape of the embryo in the confined space deserves at least commenting on this limitation of the model.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> During C. elegans development, embryos undergo elongation of their body axis in the absence of cell proliferation or growth. This process relies in an essential way on periodic contractions of two pairs of muscles that extend along the embryo's main axis. How contraction can lead to extension along the same direction is unknown.

To address this question, the authors use a continuum description of a multicomponent elastic solid. The various components are the interior of the animal, the muscles, and the epidermis. The different components form separate compartments and are described as hyperelastic solids with different shear moduli. For simplicity, a cylindrical geometry is adopted. The authors consider first the early elongation phase, which is driven by contraction of the epidermis, and then late elongation, where contraction of the muscles injects elastic energy into the system, which is then released by elongation. The authors get elongation that can be successfully fitted to the elongation dynamics of wild-type worms and two mutant strains.

Strengths:<br /> The work proposes a physical mechanism underlying a puzzling biological phenomenon. The framework developed by the authors could be used to explain phenomena in other organisms and could be exploited in the design of soft robots.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1) This reviewer considers that the quality of the writing is poor. Because of this the main result of this work, how elongation is achieved by contraction, remains unclear to me. In the opinion of this reviewer, the work is not accessible to a biologist. This is a real pity because the findings are potentially of great interest to developmental biologists and engineers alike.

2) The authors assume that the embryo is elastic throughout all stages of development. Is this assumption appropriate? In my opinion, the authors need to critically discuss this assumption and provide justification. Would this still be true for the adult? If so could the adult relax back to the state prior to elongation? The embryo should be able to do that, if the contractility of the epidermis were sufficiently reduced, right?

3) The authors impose strains rather than stress. Since they want to understand the final deformation, I find this surprising. Maybe imposing strain or stress is equivalent, but then you should discuss this.

4) Does your mechanism need 4 muscle strands or would 2 be sufficient?

5) It is sometimes hard to understand, whether the authors are talking about the model or the worm.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This work continues a series of recent publications from the Grigorieff lab (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25648, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68946, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79272, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301852120) showcasing the development of high-resolution 2D template matching (2DTM) for detection and reconstruction of macromolecules in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) images of crowded cellular environments. It is well known in the field of cryo-EM that searching noisy images with a template can result in retrieval of the template itself when averaging the candidate particles detected, an effect known as "Einstein-from-noise" (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1314449110). Briefly, this occurs because it is statistically likely to find a match to an arbitrary motif over a large noisy dataset just by chance. The effect can be mitigated for example by limiting the resolution of the template, but this prevents the accurate detection of macromolecules in a crowded environment, as their "fingerprint" lies in the high-resolution range (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25648). Here, the authors show through several experiments on in vitro and in situ data that features as small as drug compounds and water molecules can be reliably retrieved by 2DTM if they are searched by a template (the "bait") that contains expected neighboring features but not the targets themselves.

The ideas are generally clearly presented with appropriate references to related work, and claims are well supported by the data. In particular, the experiments for verifying the density of the ribosomal protein L7A as well as the systematic removal of residuals from the template model to assess bias are particularly clever.

The revised version of the manuscript addresses essentially all of the concerns raised previously by this reviewer, with the addition of figures and extended discussion of the key concepts.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

This paper by Lucas et al follows on from earlier work by the same group. They use high-resolution 2D template matching (2DTM) to find particles of a given target structure in 2D cryo-EM images, either of in vitro single-particle samples or of more complicated samples, such as FIB-milled cells (which would otherwise perhaps be used for 3D electron tomography). One major concern for high-resolution template matching has been the amount of model bias that gets introduced into a reconstruction that is calculated straight from the orientations and positions identified by the projection matching algorithm. This paper assesses the amount of model bias that gets introduced in high-resolution features of such maps.

For a high-signal-to-noise in vitro single-particle cryo-EM data set, the authors show that their approach does not yield much model bias. This is probably not very surprising, as their method is basically a low false-positive particle picker, which works very well on such data. Still, I guess that is the whole point of it, and it is good to see that they can reconstruct density for a small-molecule compound that was not present in the original template.

For FIB-milled lamella of yeast cells with stalled ribosomes, the SNR is much lower and the dangers of model bias will be higher. This is also evidenced by the observation that further refinement of initial 2DTM identified orientations and positions worsens the map. This is obviously a more relevant SNR regime to assess their method. Still, they show convincing density for the GHX compound that was not present in the template, but was there in the reconstruction from the identified particles.

Quantification of the amount of model bias is then performed using omit maps, where every 20th residue in removed from the template and corresponding reconstructions are compared (for those residues) with the full-template reconstructions. As expected, model bias increases with lower thresholds for the picking. Some model bias (Omega=8%) remains even for very high thresholds. The authors state this may be due to overfitting of noise when template-matching true particles, instead of introducing false positive. Probably, that still represents some sort of problem. Especially because the authors then go on to show that their expectations of number of false positives do not always match the correct number of false positive, probably due to inaccuracies in the noise model for more complicated images, this may warrant further in-depth discussion in a revised manuscript.

Overall, I think this paper is well written and it has made me think differently (again) about the 2DTM technique and its usefulness in various applications, as outlined in the Discussion. Therefore, it will be a constructive contribution to the field.

After the first round of review, the authors addressed most points raised in a satisfying manner, which has led to a further (relatively minor) improvement of the manuscript.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The authors evaluate the effect of high-resolution 2D template matching on template bias in reconstructions and provide a quantitative metric for overfitting. It is an interesting manuscript that made me reevaluate and correct some mistakes in my understanding of overfitting and template bias, and I'm sure it will be of great use to others in the field.

The revised version of this manuscript addresses all of my concerns. The newly added Figure 4 supplement 1 provides a sobering outlook for the fraction of the proteome we can hope to identify in situ.

Joint Public Review:

Summary:

In this paper, the authors point out that the standard approach of estimating LD is inefficient for datasets with large numbers of SNPs, with a computational cost of O(nm^2), where n is the number of individuals and m is the number of SNPs. Using the known relationship between the LD matrix and the genomic-relatedness matrix, they can calculate the mean level of LD within the genome or across genomic segments with a computational cost of O(n^2m). Since in most datasets, n<<br /> Strengths:

Generally, for computational papers like this, the proof is in the pudding, and the authors have been successful at their aim of producing an efficient computational tool. The most compelling evidence of this in the paper are Figure 2 and Supplementary Figure S2. In Figure 2, they report how well their X-LD estimates of LD compare to estimates based on the standard approach using PLINK. They appear to have very good agreement. In Figure S2, they report the computational runtime of X-LD vs PLINK, and as expected X-LD is faster than PLINK as long as it is evaluating LD for more than 8000 SNPs.

Weakness:

This method seems to be limited to calculating average levels of LD in broad regions of the genome. While it would be possible to make the regions more fine-grained, doing so appears to make this approach much less efficient. As such, applications of this method may be limited to those proposed in the paper, for questions where average LD of large chromosomal segments is informative.

Impact:

This approach seems to produce real gains for settings where broad average levels of LD are useful to know, but it will likely have less of an impact in settings where fine-grained levels are LD are necessary (e.g., accounting for LD in GWAS summary statistics).

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Hariani et al. presents experiments designed to improve our understanding of the connectivity and computational role of Unipolar Brush Cells (UBCs) within the cerebellar cortex, primarily lobes IX and X. The authors develop and cross several genetic lines of mice that express distinct fluorophores in subsets of UBCs, combined with immunocytochemistry that also distinguishes subtypes of UBCs, and they use confocal microscopy and electrophysiology to characterize the electrical and synaptic properties of subsets of so-labelled cells, and their synaptic connectivity within the cerebellar cortex. The authors then generate a computer model to test possible computational functions of such interconnected UBCs.

Using these approaches, the authors report that:<br /> 1) GRP-driven TDtomato is expressed exclusively in a subset (20%) of ON-UBCs, defined electrophysiologically (excited by mossy fiber afferent stimulation via activation of UBC AMPA and mGluR1 receptors) and immunocytochemically by their expression of mGluR1.

2) UBCs ID'd/tagged by mCitrine expression in Brainbow mouse line P079 is expressed in a similar minority subset of OFF-UBCs defined electrophysiologically (inhibited by mossy fiber afferent stimulation via activation of UBC mGluR2 receptors) and immunocytochemically by their expression of Calretinin. However, such mCitrine expression was also detected in some mGluR1 positive UBCs, which may not have shown up electrophysiologically because of the weaker fluorophore expression without antibody amplification.

3) Confocal analysis of crossed lines of mice (GRP X P079) stained with antibodies to mGluR1 and calretinin documented the existence of all possible permutations of interconnectivity between cells (ON-ON, ON-OFF, OFF-OFF, OFF-ON), but their overall abundance was low, and neither their absolute or relative abundance was quantified.

4) A computational model (NEURON ) indicated that the presence of an intermediary UBC (in a polysynaptic circuit from MF to UBC to UBC) could prolong bursts (MF-ON-ON), prolong pauses (MF-ON-OFF), cause a delayed burst (MF-OFF-OFF), cause a delayed pause (MF-OFF-ON) relative to solely MF to UBC synapses which would simply exhibit long bursts (MF-ON) or long pauses (MF-OFF).

The authors thus conclude that the pattern of interconnected UBCs provides an extended and more nuanced pattern of firing within the cerebellar cortex that could mediate longer lasting sensorimotor responses.

The cerebellum's long known role in motor skills and reflexes, and associated disorders, combined with our nascent understanding of its role in cognitive, emotional, and appetitive processing, makes understanding its circuitry and processing functions of broad interest to the neuroscience and biomedical community. The focus on UBCs, which are largely restricted to vestibular lobes of the cerebellum reduces the breadth of likely interest somewhat. The overall design of specific experiments is rigorous and the use of fluorophore expressing mouse lines is creative. The data that is presented and the writing are clear. However, despite some additional analysis in response to the initial review, the overall experimental design still has issues that reduce overall interpretation (please see specific issues for details), which combined with a lack of thorough analysis of the experimental outcomes undermines the value of the NEURON model results and the advance in our understanding of cerebellar processing in situ (again, please see specific issues for details).

Specific issues:<br /> 1) All data gathered with inhibition blocked. All of the UBC response data (Fig. 1) was gathered in the presence of GABAAR and Glycine R blockers. While such an approach is appropriate generally for isolating glutamatergic synaptic currents, and specifically for examining and characterizing monosynaptic responses to single stimuli, it becomes problematic in the context of assaying synaptic and action potential response durations for long lasting responses, and in particular for trains of stimuli, when feed-forward and feed-back inhibition modulates responses to afferent stimulation. I.e. even for single MF stimuli, given the >500ms duration of UBC synaptic currents, there is plenty of time for feedback inhibition from Golgi cells (or feedforward, from MF to Golgi cell excitation) to interrupt AP firing driven by the direct glutamatergic synaptic excitation. This issue is compounded further for all of the experiments examining trains of MF stimuli. Beyond the impact of feedback inhibition on the AP firing of any given UBC, it would also obviously reduce/alter/interrupt that UBC's synaptic drive of downstream UBCs. This issue fundamentally undermines our ability to interpret the simulation data of Vm and AP firing of both the modeled intermediate and downstream UBC, in terms of applying it to possible cerebellar cortical processing in situ.

The authors' response to the initial concern is (to paraphrase), "its not possible to do and its not important", neither of which are soundly justified.

As stated in the original review, it is fully understandable and appropriate to use GABAAR/GlycineR antagonists to isolate glutamatergic currents, to characterize their conductance kinetics. That was not the issue raised. The issue raised was that then using only such information to generate a model of in situ behavior becomes problematic, given that feedback and lateral inhibition will sculpt action potential output, which of course will then fundamentally shape their synaptic drive of secondary UBCs, which will be further sculpted by their own inhibitory inputs. This issue undermines interpretation of the NEURON model.

The argument that taking inhibition into account is not possible because of assumed or possible direct electrical excitation of Golgi cells is confusing for two interacting reasons. First, one can certainly stimulate the mossy fiber bundle to get afferent excitation of UBCs (and polysynaptic feedback/lateral inhibitory inputs) without directly stimulating the Golgi cells that innervate any recorded UBC. Yes, one might be stimulating some Golgi cells near the stimulating electrode, but one can position the stimulating electrode far enough down the white matter track (away from the recorded UBC), such that mossy fiber inputs to the recorded UBC can be stimulated without affecting Golgi cells near or synaptically connected to the recorded UBC. Moreover, if the argument were true, then presumably the stimulation protocol would be just as likely to directly stimulate neighboring UBCs, which then drove the recorded UBC's responses. Thus, it is both doable and should be ensured that stimulation of the white matter is distant enough to not be directly activating relevant, connected neurons within the granule cell layer.

Finally, the authors present three examples of UBC recordings with and without inhibitory inputs blocked, and state "Thus, these large conductances are unlikely to be significantly shaped by 1-10 ms IPSCs from feedforward and feedback GABA/glycine inhibition" and "GABA/glycinergic inhibition...has little to no effect on the slow inward current that develops after the end of stimulation". This response reflects on original concerns about lack of quantification or consideration of important parameters. In particular, while the traces with and without inhibition are qualitatively similar, quantitative considerations indicate otherwise. First, unquantified examples are not adequate to drive conclusions. Regardless, the main issue (how inhibition affects actual responses in situ) is actually highlighted by the authors current clamp recordings of UBC responses, before and after blocking inhibition. The output response is dramatically different, both at early and late time points, when inhibition is blocked. Again, a lack of quantification (of adequate n's) makes it hard to know exactly how important, but quick "eye ball" estimates of impact include: 1) a switch from only low frequency APs initially (without inhibition blocked) to immediate burst of high frequency APs (high enough to not discern individual APs with given figure resolution) when inhibition is blocked, 2) Slow rising to a peak EPSP, followed by symmetrical return to baseline (without inhibition blocked) versus immediate rise to peak, followed by prolonged decay to baseline (with inhibition blocked), 3) substantially shorter duration (~34% shorter) secondary high frequency burst (individual APs not discernible) of APs (with inhibition blocked versus without inhibition blocked), and 4) substantial reduction in number of long delayed APs (with inhibition blocked versus without inhibition blocked). Thus, clearly, feedback/lateral inhibition is actually sculpting AP output at all phases of the UBC response to trains of afferent stimulations. Importantly, the single voltage clamp trace showing little impact of transient IPSCs on the slow EPSC do not take into account likely IPSC influences on voltage-activated conductances that would not occur in voltage-clamp recordings but would be free to manifest in current clamp, and thereby influence AP output, as observed.

So again, our ability to understand how interconnected UBCs behave in the intact system is undermined by the lack of consideration and quantification of the impact of inhibition, and it not being incorporated into the model. At the very least a strong proviso about lack of inclusion of such information, given the authors' data showing its importance in the few examples shown, should be added to the discussion.

2) No consideration for involvement of polysynaptic UBCs driving UBC responses to MF stimulation in electrophysiology experiments. Given the established existence (in this manuscript and Dino et al. 2000 Neurosci, Dino et al. 2000 ProgBrainRes, Nunzi and Mugnaini 2000 JCompNeurol, Nunzi et al. 2001 JCompNeurol) of polysynaptic connections from MFs to UBCs to UBCs, the MF evoked UBC responses established in this manuscript, especially responses to trains of stimuli could be mediated by direct MF inputs, or to polysynaptic UBC inputs, or possibly both (to my awareness not established either way). Thus the response durations could already include extension of duration by polysynaptic inputs, and so would overestimate the duration of monosynaptic inputs, and thus polysynaptic amplification/modulation, observed in the NEURON model.

Author response: "UBCs receive a single mossy fiber input on their dendritic brush, and thus if our stimulation produces a reliable, short-latency response consistent with a monosynaptic input, then there is not likely to be a disynaptic input."

This statement is not congruent with the literature, with early work by Mugnaini and colleagues (Mugnaini et al. 1994 Synapse; Mugnaini and Flores 1994 J. Comp. Neurol.) indicating that UBCs are innervated by 1-2 mossy fibers, which are as likely other UBC terminals as MFs. This leaves open the possibility that so called monosynaptic responses do, as originally suggested, already include polysynaptic feedforward amplification of duration. While the authors also indicate that isolated disynaptic currents can be observed when they occur in isolation, a careful examination and objective documentation of "monosynaptic" responses would address this issue. Presumably, if potential disynaptic UBC inputs occur during a monosynaptic MF response, it would be detected as an abrupt biphasic inward/outward current, due to additional AMPA receptor activation but further desensitization of those already active (as observed by Kinney et al. 1997 J. Neurophysiol: "The delivery of a second MF stimulus at the peak of the slow EPSC evoked a fast EPSC of reduced amplitude followed by an undershoot of the subsequent slow current"). If such polysynaptic inputs are truly absent and are "rare" in isolation, some estimation of how common or not such synaptic amplification is, would improve our understanding of the overall significance of these inputs.

3) Lack of quantification of subtypes of UBC interconnectivity. Given that it is already established that UBCs synapse onto other UBCs (see refs above), the main potential advance of this manuscript in terms of connectivity is the establishment and quantification of ON-ON, ON-OFF, OFF-ON, and OFF-OFF subtypes of UBC interconnections. But, the authors only establish that each type exists, showing specific examples, but no quantification of the absolute or relative density was provided, and the authors' unquantified wording explicitly or implicitly states that they are not common. This lack of quantification and likely small number makes it difficult to know how important or what impact such synapses have on cerebellar processing, in the model and in situ.

To address this issue, the authors added the following text to the discussion section: "We did not estimate the density of these UBC to UBC connections, because the sparseness of labeling using these approaches made an accurate calculation impossible. Previous work using organotypic slice cultures from P8 mice estimated that 2/3 of the UBC population receives input from other UBCs (Nunzi & Mugnaini, 2000), although it is unclear whether this is the case in older mice."

While accurate, the addition doesn't really address the situation, which is that apparently the reported connections are rare. Adding the information about 2/3 of UBCs having UBC inputs in culture, implies the opposite might be true (i.e. that they might be quite common), which is in contrast to the authors' data, so should be reworded for clarity, which should also incorporate the considerations covered in point #2 above. I.e. if the authors do establish that none of their recordings have polysynaptic inputs, and if they determine that the number of cells that showed isolated di-synaptic inputs is indeed rare, then it suggests that these specific polysynaptic connections are in fact rare.

4) Lack of critical parameters in NEURON model.<br /> A) The model uses # of molecules of glutamate released as the presumed quantal content, and this factor is constant. However, no consideration of changes in # of vesicles released from single versus trains of APs from MFs or UBCs is included. At most simple synapses, two sequential APs alters release probability, either up or down, and release probability changes dynamically with trains of APs. It is therefore reasonable to imagine UBC axon release probability is at least as complicated, and given the large surface area of contact between two UBCs, the number of vesicles released for any given AP is also likely more complex.

B) the model does not include desensitization of AMPA receptors, which in the case of UBCs can paradoxically reduce response magnitude as vesicle release and consequent glutamate concentration in the cleft increases (Linney et al. 1997 JNeurophysiol, Lu et al. 2017 Neuron, Balmer et al. 2021 eLIFE), as would occur with trains of stimuli at MF to ON-UBCs.

While the authors have not added the suggested additional parameters, their clarifications regarding the implications of existing parameters, and demonstration of reasonable fits to experimental data, and lack of substantial effect of simulating reduced vesicle release probability, provided by the authors, adequately addresses this concern.

5) Lack of quantification of various electrophysiological responses. UBCs are defined (ON or OFF) based on inward or outward synaptic response, but no information is provided about the range of the key parameter of duration across cells, which seems most critical to the current considerations. There is a similar lack of quantification across cells of AP duration in response to stimulation or current injections, or during baseline. The latter lack is particularly problematic because in agreement with previous publications, the raw data in Fig. 1 shows ON UBCs as quiescent until MF stimulation and OFF UBCs firing spontaneously until MF stimulation, but, for example, at least one ON UBC in the NEURON model is firing spontaneously until synaptically activated by an OFF UBC (Fig. 11A), and an OFF UBC is silent until stimulated by a presynaptic OFF UBC (Fig. 11C). This may be expected/explainable theoretically, but then such cells should be observed in the raw data.

The authors have added additional analysis and discussion, which adequately addresses this concern.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

In this paper, the authors presented a compelling rationale for investigating the role of UBCs in prolonging and diversifying signals. Based on the two types of UBCs known as ON and OFF UBC subtypes, they have highlighted the existing gaps in understanding UBCs connectivity and the need to investigate whether UBCs target UBCs of the same subtype, different subtypes, or both. The importance of this knowledge is for understanding how sensory signals are extended and diversified in the granule cell layer.

The authors designed very interesting approaches to study UBCs connectivity by utilizing transgenic mice expressing GFP and RFP in UBCs, Brainbow approach, immunohistochemical and electrophysiological analysis, and computational models to understand how the feed-forward circuits of interconnected UBCs transform their inputs.

This study provided evidence for the existence of distinct ON and OFF UBC subtypes based on their electrophysiological properties, anatomical characteristics, and expression patterns of mGluR1 and calretinin in the cerebellum. The findings support the classification of GRP UBCs as ON UBCs and P079 UBCs as OFF UBCs and suggest the presence of synaptic connections between the ON and OFF UBC subtypes. In addition, they found that GRP and P079 UBCs form parallel and convergent pathways and have different membrane capacitance and excitability. Furthermore, they showed that UBCs of the same subtype provide input to one another and modify the input to granule cells, which could provide a circuit mechanism to diversify and extend the pattern of spiking produced by mossy fiber input. Accordingly, they suggested that these transformations could provide a circuit mechanism for maintaining a sensory representation of movement for seconds.

Overall, the article is well written in a sound detailed format, very interesting with excellent discovery and suggested model.

I believe the authors have provided appropriate responses and have consequently revised the manuscript in a convincing manner. Although I am not an expert in physiology, I find the explanations and clarifications to be acceptable.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> ECM components are prominent constituents of the pericellular environment of CNS cells and form complex and dynamic interactomes in the pericellular spaces. Based on bioinformatic analysis, more than 300 genes have been attributed to the so-called matrisome, many of which are detectable in the CNS. Yet, not much is known about their functions while increasing evidence suggests important contributions to developmental processes, neural plasticity, and inhibition of regeneration in the CNS. In this respect, the present work offers new insights and adds interesting aspects to the facets of ECM contributions to neural development. This is even more relevant in view of the fact that neurocan has recently been identified as a potential risk gene for neuropsychiatric diseases. Because ECM components occur in the interstitial space and are linked in interactomes their study is very difficult. A strength of the manuscript is that the authors used several approaches to shed light on ECM function, including proteome studies, the generation of knockout mouse lines, and the analysis of in vivo labeled neural progenitors. This multi-perspective approach permitted to reveal hitherto unknown properties of the ECM and highlighted its importance for the overall organization of the CNS.

Strengths:<br /> Systematic analysis of the ternary complex between neurone, TNC, and hyaluronic acid; establishment of KO mouse lines to study the function of the complex, use of in utero electroporation to investigate the impact on neuronal migration;

Weaknesses:<br /> The analysis is focused on neuronal progenitors, however, the potential impact of the molecules of interest, in particular, their removal on differentiation and /or survival of neural stem/progenitor cells is not addressed. The potential receptors involved are not considered. It also seems that rather the passage to the outer areas of the forming cortex is compromised, which is not the same as the migration process. The movement of the cells is not included in the analysis.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In the present study, authors found the ternary complex formed by NCAN, TNC, and HA as an important factor facilitating the multipolar to bipolar transition in the intermediate zone (IZ) of the developing cortex. NCAM binds HA via the N-terminal Link modules, meanwhile, TNC cross-links NCAN through the CDL domain at the C-terminal. The expression and right localization of these three factors facilitate the multipolar-bipolar transition necessary for immature neurons to migrate radially. TNC and NCAM are also involved in neuronal morphology. The authors used a wide range of techniques to study the interaction between these three molecules in the developing cortex. In addition, single and double KO mice for NCAN and TNC were analyzed to decipher the role of these molecules in neuronal migration and morphology.

Strengths:<br /> The study of the formation of the cerebral cortex is crucial to understanding the pathophysiology of many neurodevelopmental disorders associated with malformation of the cerebral cortex. In this study, the authors showed, for the first time, that the ternary complex formed by NCAN, TNC, and HA promotes neuronal migration. The results regarding the interaction between the three factors forming the ternary complex are convincing.

Weaknesses:<br /> However, regarding the in vivo experiments, the authors should consider some points for the interpretation of the results:<br /> -The authors did not use the proper controls in their experiments. For embryonic analysis, such as cortical migration, neuronal morphology, and protein distribution (Fig. 6, 7, and 9), mutant mice should be compared with control littermates, since differences in the results could be due to differences in embryonic stages. For example, in Fig. 6 the dKO is more developed than the WT embryo.<br /> -The authors claim that NCAM and TNC are involved in neuronal migration from experiments using single KO embryos. This is a strong statement considering the mild results, with no significant difference in the case of TNC KO embryos, and once again, using embryos from different litters.<br /> -The measurement of immunofluorescence intensity is not the right method to compare the relative amount of protein between control and mutant embryos unless there is a right normalization.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors sought to determine, at the level of individual presubiculum pyramidal cells, how allocentric spatial information from the retrosplenial cortex was integrated with egocentric information from the anterior thalamic nuclei. Employing a dual opsin optogenetic approach with patch clamp electrophysiology, Richevaux, and colleagues found that around three-quarters of layer 3 pyramidal cells in the presubiculum receive monosynaptic input from both brain regions. While some interesting questions remain (e.g. the role of inhibitory interneurons in gating the information flow and through different layers of presubiculum, this paper provides valuable insights into the microcircuitry of this brain region and the role that it may play in spatial navigation).

Strengths:<br /> One of the main strengths of this manuscript was that the dual opsin approach allowed the direct comparison of different inputs within an individual neuron, helping to control for what might otherwise have been an important source of variation. The experiments were well-executed and the data was rigorously analysed. The conclusions were appropriate to the experimental questions and were well-supported by the results. These data will help to inform in vivo experiments aimed at understanding the contribution of different brain regions in spatial navigation and could be valuable for computational modelling.

Weaknesses:<br /> Some attempts were made to gain mechanistic insights into how inhibitory neurotransmission may affect processing in the presubiculum (e.g. Figure 5) but these experiments were a little underpowered and the analysis carried out could have been more comprehensively undertaken, as was done for other experiments in the manuscript.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this manuscript, the authors use anatomical tracing and slice physiology to investigate the integration of thalamic (ATN) and retrosplenial cortical (RSC) signals in the dorsal presubiculum (PrS). This work will be of interest to the field, as the postsubiculum is thought to be a key region for integrating internal head direction representations with external landmarks. The main result is that ATN and RSC inputs drive the same L3 PrS neurons, which exhibit superlinear summation to near-coincident inputs. Moreover, this activity can induce bursting in L4 PrS neurons, which can pass the signals LMN (perhaps gated by cholinergic input).

Strengths:<br /> The slice physiology experiments are carefully done. The analyses are clear and convincing, and the figures and results are well-composed. Overall, these results will be a welcome addition to the field.

Weaknesses:<br /> The conclusions about the circuit-level function of L3 PrS neurons sometimes outstrip the data, and their model of the integration of these inputs is unclear. I would recommend some revision of the introduction and discussion. I also had some minor comments about the experimental details and analysis.

Specific major comments:<br /> 1) I found that the authors' claims sometimes outstrip their data, given that there were no in vivo recordings during behavior. For example, in the abstract, their results indicate "that layer 3 neurons can transmit a visually matched HD signal to medial entorhinal cortex", and in the conclusion they state "[...] cortical RSC projections that carry visual landmark information converge on layer 3 pyramidal cells of the dorsal presubiculum". However, they never measured the nature of the signals coming from ATN and RSC to L3 PrS (or signals sent to downstream regions). Their claim is somewhat reasonable with respect to ATN, where the majority of neurons encode HD, but neurons in RSC encode a vast array of spatial and non-spatial variables other than landmark information (e.g., head direction, egocentric boundaries, allocentric position, spatial context, task history to name a few), so making strong claims about the nature of the incoming signals is unwarranted.

2) Related to the first point, the authors hint at, but never explain, how coincident firing of ATN and RSC inputs would help anchor HD signals to visual landmarks. Although the lesion data (Yoder et al. 2011 and 2015) support their claims, it would be helpful if the proposed circuit mechanism was stated explicitly (a schematic of their model would be helpful in understanding the logic). For example, how do neurons integrate the "right" sets of landmarks and HD signals to ensure stable anchoring? Moreover, it would be helpful to discuss alternative models of HD-to-landmark anchoring, including several studies that have proposed that the integration may (also?) occur in RSC (Page & Jeffrey, 2018; Yan, Burgess, Bicanski, 2021; Sit & Goard, 2023). Currently, much of the Discussion simply summarizes the results of the study, this space could be better used in mapping the findings to the existing literature on the overarching question of how HD signals are anchored to landmarks.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Richevaux et al investigate how anterior thalamic (AD) and retrosplenial (RSC) inputs are integrated by single presubicular (PrS) layer 3 neurons. They show that these two inputs converge onto single PrS layer 3 principal cells. By performing dual-wavelength photostimulation of these two inputs in horizontal slices, the authors show that in most layer 3 cells, these inputs summate supra-linearly. They extend the experiments by focusing on putative layer 4 PrS neurons, and show that they do not receive direct anterior thalamic nor retrosplenial inputs; rather, they are (indirectly) driven to burst firing in response to strong activation of the PrS network.

This is a valuable study, that investigates an important question - how visual landmark information (possibly mediated by retrosplenial inputs) converges and integrates with HD information (conveyed by the AD nucleus of the thalamus) within PrS circuitry. The data indicate that near-coincident activation of retrosplenial and thalamic inputs leads to non-linear integration in target layer 3 neurons, thereby offering a potential biological basis for landmark + HD binding.

The main limitations relate to the anatomical annotation of 'putative' PrS L4 neurons, and to the presentation of retrosplenial/thalamic input modularity. Specifically, more evidence should be provided to convincingly demonstrate that the 'putative L4 neurons' of the PrS are not distal subicular neurons (as the authors' anatomy and physiology experiments seem to indicate). The modularity of thalamic and retrosplenial inputs could be better clarified in relation to the known PrS modularity.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary: The authors apply a new approach to monitor widespread changes in sensory evoked hemodynamic activity after focal stroke in fully conscious rats. Using functional ultrasound (fUS), they report immediate and lasting (up to 5 days) depression of sensory evoked responses in somatosensory thalamic and cortical regions.

Strengths: This a technically challenging study that employs new methods to study more distributed changes in sensory evoked neural activity, inferred from changes in cerebral blood flow. The authors provide compelling images and rigorous analysis to support their conclusions.

The primary weakness of this paper was the small sample size used for drawing conclusions. The authors have added additional references that help support their preliminary findings.

Ultimately, it is a proof of concept paper showing the potential of this imaging approach for examining brain wide changes in activity before and after stroke in awake animals. In that sense, I think this paper will be well appreciated by researchers trying to understand how stroke leads to distributed changes in brain function.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Brunner et al. present a new and promising application of functional ultrasound (fUS) imaging to follow the evolution of perfusion and haemodynamics upon thrombotic stroke in awake rats. The authors leveraged a chemically induced occlusion of the rat Medial Cerebral Artery (MCA) with ferric chloride in awake rats, while imaging with fUS cerebral perfusion with high spatial and temporal resolution (100µm x 110µm x 300µm x 0.8s). The authors also measured evoked haemodynamic responses at different timepoints following whisker stimulation.

As the fUS setup of the authors is limited to 2D imaging, Brunner and colleagues focused on a single coronal slice where they identified the primary Somatosensory Barrel Field of the Cortex (S1BF), directly perfused by the MCA and relay nuclei of the Thalamus: the Posterior (Po) and the Ventroposterior Medial (VPM) nuclei of the Thalamus. All these regions are involved in the sensory processing of whisker stimulation. By investigating these regions the authors present the hyper-acute effect of the stroke with these main results:

- MCA occlusion results in a fast and important loss of perfusion in the ipsilesional cortex.<br /> - Thrombolysis is followed by Spreading Depolarisation measured in the Retrosplenial cortex.<br /> - Stroke-induced hypo-perfusion is associated with a significant drop in ipsilesional cortical response to whisker stimulation, and a milder one in ipsilesional subcortical relays.<br /> - Contralesional hemisphere is almost not affected by stroke with the exception of the cortex which presents a mildly reduced response to the stimulation.

In addition, the authors demonstrate that their protocol allows to follow up stroke evolution up to five days postinduction. They further show that fUS can estimate the size of the infarcted volume with brilliance mode (Bmode), confirming the presence of the identified lesional tissue with post-mortem cresyl violet staining.

Upon measuring functional response to whisker stimulation 5 days after stroke induction, the authors report that:

- The ipsilesional cortex presents no response to the stimulation<br /> - The ipsilesional thalamic relays are less activated than hyper acutely

These observations mainly validate a new method to chronically image the longitudinal sequelae of stroke in awake animals. However, the potentially more intriguing results the authors describe in terms of functional reorganization of functional activity following stroke will require additional data to be validated. While highly preliminary, the research model proposed by the author (where the loss of the infarcted cortex induces reduces activity in connected regions, whether by cortico-thalamic or cortico-cortical loss of excitatory drive), is interesting. This hypothesis would require a greatly expanded, sufficiently powered study to be validated (or disproven)."

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The authors set out to demonstrate the utility of functional ultrasound for evaluating changes in brain hemodynamics elicited acutely and subacutely by middle cerebral artery occlusion model of ischemic stroke in awake rats.<br /> Functional ultrasound affords a distinct set of tradeoffs relative to competing imaging modalities. Acclimatization of rats for awake imaging has proven difficult with most, and the high quality of presented data in awake rats is a major achievement. The major weakness of the approach is in its being restricted to single slice acquisitions, which also complicates registration of acquisition across multiple imaging sessions within the same animal. Establishing that awake imaging represents an advancement in relation to studies under anesthesia hinges upon establishment of the level of stress experienced by the animals in the course of imaging, i.e., requires providing data on the assessment of stress over the course of these long imaging sessions, which was not undertaken. This is particularly significant given that physical restraint has been established to be a particularly potent stressor in experimental models of stress. Assessment of the robustness of these measurements in a larger cohort of animals under varying conditions is of particular significance for supporting its wide applicability.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors were attempting to determine the extent that CIH altered swallowing motor function; specifically, the timing and probability of the activation of the larygneal and submental motor pools. The paper describes a variety of different motor patterns elicited by optogenetic activation of individual neuronal phenotypes within PiCo in a group of mice exposed to CIH. They show that there are a variety of motor patterns that emerge in CIH mice; this is apparently different than the more consistent motor patterns elicited by PiCo activation in normoxic mice (previously published).

Strengths:<br /> The preparation is technically challenging and gives valuable information related to the role of PiCo in the pattern of motor activation involved in swallowing and its timing with phrenic activity. Genetic manipulations allow for the independent activation of the individual neuronal phenotypes of PiCo (glutamatergic, cholinergic) which is a strength.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The data presented are largely descriptive in terms of the effect of PiCo activation on the probability of swallowing and the pattern of motor activation changes following CIH. Comparisons made between experimental data acquired currently and those obtained in a previous cohort of animals (possibly years before) are extremely problematic, with the potential confounding influence of changing environments, genetics, and litter effects. The statistical analyses (i.e. comparing CIH with normoxic) appear insufficiently robust. Exactly how the data were compared is not described.

2. There is limited mechanistic insight into how PiCo manipulation alters the pattern and probability of motor activation. For example, does CIH alter PiCo directly, or some other component of the circuit (NTS)? Techniques that silence or activation projections to/from PiCo should be interrogated. This is required to further delineate and define the swallowing circuit, which remains enigmatic.

3. The functional significance of the altered (non-classic) patterns is unclear.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, the authors investigated the role of a medullary region, named Postinspiratory Complex (PiCo), in the mediation of swallow/laryngeal behaviours, their coordination with breathing, and the possible impact on the reflex exerted by chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH). This region is characterized by the presence of glutamatergic/cholinergic interneurons. Thus, experiments have been performed in single allelic and intersectional allelic recombinase transgenic mice to specifically excite cholinergic/glutamatergic neurons using optogenetic techniques, while recording from relevant muscles involved in swallowing and laryngeal activation. The data indicate that in anaesthetized transgenic mice exposed to CIH, the optogenetic activation of PiCo neurons triggers swallow activity characterized by variable motor patterns. In addition, these animals show an increased probability of triggering a swallow when stimulation is applied during the first part of the respiratory cycle.

They conclude that the PiCo region may be involved in the occurrence of swallow and other laryngeal behaviours. These data interestingly improve the ongoing discussion on neural pathways involved in swallow-breathing coordination, with specific attention to factors leading to disruption that may contribute to dysphagia under some pathological conditions.

The Authors' conclusions are partially justified by their data. However, it should be acknowledged that the impact of the study is to a certain extent limited by the lack of knowledge on the source of excitatory inputs to PiCo during swallowing under physiological conditions, i.e. during water-evoked swallowing. Also the connectivity between this region and the swallowing CPG, a structure not well defined, or other brain regions involved in the reflex is not known.

Strengths:<br /> Major strengths of the manuscript:

- The methodological approach is refined and well-suited for the experimental question. The in vivo mouse preparation developed for this study takes advantage of selective optogenetic stimulation of specific cell types with the simultaneous EMG recordings from upper airway muscles involved in respiration and swallowing to assess their motor patterns. The animal model and the chronic intermittent hypoxia protocol have already been published in previous papers (Huff et al. 2022, 2023).

- The choice of the topic. Swallow disruption may contribute to the dysphagia under some pathological conditions, such as obstructive sleep apnea. Investigations aimed at exploring and clarifying neural structures involved in this behaviour as well as the connectivity underpinning muscle coordination are needed.

- This study fits in with previous works. This work is a logical extension of previous studies from this group on swallowing-breathing coordination with further advances using a mouse model for obstructive sleep apnea.

Weaknesses:<br /> Major weaknesses of the manuscript:

- The Authors should be more cautious in concluding that the PiCo is critical for the generation of swallowing itself. It remains to demonstrate that PiCo is necessary for swallowing and laryngeal function in a more physiological situation, i.e. swallow of a bolus of water or food. It should be interesting to investigate the effects of silencing PiCo cholinergic/glutamatergic neurons on normal swallowing. In this perspective, the title should be slightly modified to avoid "swallow pattern generation" (e.g. Chronic Intermittent Hypoxia reveals the role of the Postinspiratory Complex in the mediation of normal swallow production).

- The duration of swallows evoked by optogenetic stimulation of PiCo is considerably shorter in comparison with the duration of swallows evoked by a physiological stimulus (water). This makes it hard to compare the timing and the pattern of motor response in CIH-exposed mice. In Figure 1, the trace time scale should be the same for water-triggered and PiCo-triggered swallows. In addition, it is not clear if exposure to CIH alters the ongoing respiratory activity. Is the respiratory rhythm altered by hypoxia? If a disturbed or irregular pattern of breathing is already present in CIH-exposed mice, could this alteration interfere with the swallowing behaviour?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In the present study, the authors investigated the effects of CIH on the swallowing and breathing responses to PICO stimulation. Their conclusion is that glutamatergic-cholinergic neurons from PICO are not only critical for the gating of post-inspiratory and swallow activity, but also play important roles in the generation of swallow motor patterns. There are several aspects that deserve the authors' attention and comments, mainly related to the study´s conclusions.

- The authors refer to PICO as the generator of post-inspiratory rhythm. However, evidence points to this region as a modulator of post-inspiratory activity rather than a rhythmogenic site (Toor et al., 2019 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0502-19.2019; Oliveira et al., 2021 - 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2021.09.015). For example, sustained activation of PICO for 10 s barely affected the vagus or laryngeal post-inspiratory activity (Huff et al., 2023 - 10.7554/eLife.86103).

- The optogenetic activation of glutamatergic and cholinergic neurons from PICO evoked submental and laryngeal responses, and CIH changed these motor responses. Therefore, the authors proposed that PICO is directly involved in swallow pattern generation and that CIH disrupts the connection between PICO and SPG (swallow pattern generator). However, the experiments of the present study did not provide evidence about connections between these two regions nor their possible disruption after CIH, or even whether PICO is part of SPG.

- CIH affects several brainstem regions which might contribute to generating abnormal motor responses to PICO stimulation. For example, Bautista et al. (1995 - 10.1152/japplphysiol.01356.2011) documented that intermittent hypoxia induces changes in the activity of laryngeal motoneurons by neural plasticity mechanisms involving serotonin.

- To support the hypothesis that PICO is directly involved in swallow pattern generation the authors should perform the inhibition of Vglut2-ChAT neurons from PICO and then evoke swallow motor responses. If swallow is abolished when the neurons from this region are inhibited, it would indicate that PICO is crucial to generate this behavior.

- In almost all the data presented, the authors observed different patterns of changes in the motor submental and laryngeal responses to PICO activation, including that animals submitted to CIH (6%) presented a "normal" motor response. However, the authors did not discuss the possible explanations and functional implications of this variability.

- In Figure 4, the authors need to present low magnification sections showing the PICO transfected neurons as well as the absence of transfection in the ventral respiratory column. The authors could also check the scale since the cAmb seems very small.

- Finally, the title does not reflect the study. The present study did not demonstrate that PICO is a swallow pattern generator.

Joint Public Review:

The authors aimed to contrast the effects of pharmacologically enhanced catecholamine and acetylcholine levels versus the effects of voluntary spatial attention on decision making in a standard spatial cuing paradigm. Meticulously reported, the authors show that atomoxetine, a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and cue validity both enhance model-based evidence accumulation rate, but have several distinct effects on EEG signatures of pre-stimulus cortical excitability, evoked sensory EEG potentials and perceptual evidence accumulation. The results are based on a reasonable sample size (N=28) and state-of-the art modeling and EEG methods.

The authors' EEG findings provide solid evidence for the overall conclusion that selective attention and neuromodulatory systems shape perception in "similar, unique, and interactive" ways. This is an important conclusion because neuromodulatory systems and selective spatial attention are both known to regulate the neural gain of task-relevant single neurons and neural networks. Apparently, these effects on neural gain affect decision making in partly overlapping and partly dissociable ways.

The effects of donepezil, a cholinesterase inhibitor, were generally less strong than those of atomoxetine, and in various analyses went in the opposite direction. The authors fairly conclude that more work is necessary to determine the effects of cholinergic neuromodulation on perceptual decision making.

Joint Public Review:

Cook, Watt, and colleagues previously reported that a mouse model of Spinocerebellar ataxia type 6 (SCA6) displayed defects in BDNF and TrkB levels at an early disease stage. Moreover, they have shown that one month of exercise elevated cerebellar BDNF expression and improved ataxia and cerebellar Purkinje cell firing rate deficits. In the current work, they attempt to define the mechanism underlying the pathophysiological changes occurring in SCA6. For this, they carried out RNA sequencing of cerebellar vermis tissue in 12-month-old SCA6 mice, a time when the disease is already at an advanced stage, and identified widespread dysregulation of many genes involved in the endo-lysosomal system. Focusing on BDNF/TrkB expression, localization, and signaling they found that, in 7-8 month-old SCA6 mice early endosomes are enlarged and accumulate BDNF and TrkB in Purkinje cells. Curiously, TrkB appears to be reduced in the recycling endosomes compartment, despite the fact that recycling endosomes are morphologically normal in SCA6. In addition, the authors describe a reduction in the Late endosomes in SCA6 Purkinje cells associated with reduced BDNF levels and a probable deficit in late endosome maturation.

Strengths:<br /> The article is well written, and the findings are relevant for the neuropathology of different neurodegenerative diseases where dysfunction of early endosomes is observed. The authors have provided a detailed analysis of the endo-lysosomal system in SCA6 mice. They have shown that TrkB recycling to the cell membrane in recycling endosomes is reduced, and the late endosome transport of BDNF for degradation is impaired. The findings will be crucial in understanding underlying pathology. Lastly, the deficits in early endosomes are rescued by chronic administration of 7,8-DHF.

Weaknesses:<br /> The specificity of BDNF and TrkB immunostaining requires additional controls, as it has been very difficult to detect immunostaining of BDNF.<br /> The revised manuscript has included additional analysis using epitope retrieval and a negative liver control with the Abcam antibody against BDNF. An alternative antibody that may be considered for BDNF detection is from Icosagen AS. This antibody has been found to be effective for immunofluorescence and immunoblot purposes.

Two other issues were brought up in the initial review process--

1) One important concern about the conclusions is that the RNAseq experiment was conducted in 12-month-old SCA6 mice suggesting that the defects in the endo-lysosomal system may be caused by other pathophysiological events and, likewise, the impairment in BDNF signaling may also be indirect, as also noted by the authors. Indeed, Purkinje cells in SCA6 mice have an impaired ability to degrade other endocytosed cargo beyond BDNF and TrkB, most likely because of trafficking deficits that result in a disruption in the transport of cargo to the lysosomes and lysosomal dysfunction.<br /> This concern was acknowledged in the revision and will require further analysis.

2) Moreover, the beneficial effects of 7,8-DHF treatment on motor coordination may be caused by 7,8-DHF properties other than the putative agonist role on TrkB. Indeed, many reservations have been raised about using 7,8-DHF as an agonist of TrkB activity. Several studies have now debunked (Todd et al. PlosONE 2014, PMID: 24503862; Boltaev et al. Sci Signal 2017, PMID: 28831019) or at the very least questioned (Lowe D, Science 2017: see Discussion: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/those-compounds-aren-t-what-you-think-they-are Wang et al. Cell 2022 PMID: 34963057). Another interpretation is that 7,8-DHF possesses antioxidant activity and neuroprotection against cytotoxicity in HT-22 and PC12 cells, both of which do not express TrkB (Chen et al. Neurosci Lett 201, PMID: 21651962; Han et al. Neurochem Int. 2014, PMID: 24220540). Thus, while this flavonoid may have a beneficial effect on the pathophysiology of SCA6, it is most unlikely that mechanistically this occurs through a TrkB agonistic effect considering the potent anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory roles of flavonoids in neurodegenerative diseases (Jones et al. Trends Pharmacol Sci 2012, PMID: 22980637).<br /> The authors have acknowledged alternative explanations for the action of 7,8-DHF and have qualified the discussion of this issue.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Cullinan et al. explore the hypothesis that the cytoplasmic N- and C-termini of ASIC1a, not resolved in x-ray or cryo-EM structures, form a dynamic complex that breaks apart at low pH, exposing a C-terminal binding site for RIPK1, a regulator of necrotic cell death. They expressed channels tagged at their N- and C-termini with the fluorescent, non-canonical amino acid ANAP in CHO cells using amber stop-codon suppression. Interaction between the termini was assessed by FRET between ANAP and colored transition metal ions bound either to a cysteine reactive chelator attached to the channel (TETAC) or metal-chelating lipids (C18-NTA). A key advantage to using metal ions is that they are very poor FRET acceptors, i.e. they must be very close to the donor for FRET to occur. This is ideal for measuring small distances/changes in distance on the scales expected from the initial hypothesis. In order to apply chelated metal ions, CHO cells were mechanically unroofed, providing access to the inner leaflet of the plasma membrane. At high pH, the N- and C- termini are close enough for FRET to be measured, but apparently too far apart to be explained by a direct binding interaction. At low pH, there was an apparent increase in FRET between the termini. FRET between ANAP on the N-and C-termini and metal ions bound to the plasma membrane suggests that both termini move away from the plasma membrane at low pH. The authors propose an alternative hypothesis whereby close association with the plasma membrane precludes RIPK1 biding to the C-terminus of ASIC1a.

The findings presented here are certainly valuable for the ion channel/signaling field and the technical approach only increases the significance of the work. The choice of techniques is appropriate for this study and the results are clear and high quality. Sufficient evidence is presented against the starting hypothesis. I have a few questions about certain controls and assumptions that I would like to see discussed more explicitly in the manuscript.

--As discussed by the authors, the C-terminal citrine could potentially disrupt the hypothesized interaction between the N- and C-termini.

--There is apparent read-through of some of the stop codons in the absence of ANAP, which could complicate interpretation of the experiments. The largest amount of read-through is for the E6TAG, L18TAG, and H515TAG constructs, which were not used for further experiments. However, some degree of read-through is evident from western blots for V10TAG, Q14TAG, L41TAG, and A44TAG as well.

Since the epitope used for western blots is on the C-terminus of the protein, the blots do not show the fraction of truncated protein. As discussed by the authors, N-terminally truncated constructs would be too small to assemble into channels. In constructs with the TAG codon towards the C-terminus, there is the potential for co-assembly of full-length and truncated subunits into trimers. Truncated subunits would not contribute directly to the fluorescence signal, but could potentially have allosteric effects on the position of the C-termini of full-length ANAP-tagged constructs in the context of a mixed channel.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors use previously characterised FRET methods to measure distances between intracellular segments of ASIC and with the membrane. The distances are measured across different conditions and at multiple positions in a very complete study. The picture that emerges is that the N- and C-termini do not associate.

Strengths:<br /> Good controls, good range of measurements, advanced, well-chosen and carefully performed FRET measurements. The paper is a technical triumph. Particularly, given the weak fluorescence of ANAP, the extent of measurements and the combination with TETAC is noteworthy.

The distance measurements are largely coherent and favour the interpretation that the N and C terminus are not close together as previously claimed.

Weaknesses:<br /> One difficulty, which admittedly is hard to address, is that we do not have a positive control for what binding of something to either N- or C-terminus would look like (either in FRET or otherwise).

One limitation is unroofing. The concept of interaction with intracellular domains is being examined. But the authors use unroofing to measure the positions, fully disrupting the cytoplasm. Thus it is not excluded that the unroofing disrupts that interaction. But this limitation is discussed adequately in the text.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary: The manuscript by Cullinan et al., uses ANAP-tmFRET to test the hypothesis that the NTD and CTD form a complex at rest and to probe these domains for acid-induced conformational changes. They find convincing evidence that the NTD and CTD do not have a propensity to form a complex. They also report these domains are parallel to the membrane and that the NTD moves towards, and the CTD away, from the membrane upon acidification.

Strengths:<br /> The major strength of the paper is the use of tmFRET, which excels at measuring short distances and is insensitive to orientation effects. The donor-acceptor pairs here are also great choices as they are minimally disruptive to the structure being studies.

Furthermore, they conduct these measurements over several positions with the N and C tails, both between the tails and to the membrane. Finally, to support their main point, MST is conducted to measure the association of recombinant N and C peptides, finding no evidence of association or complex formation.

Weaknesses:<br /> While tmFRET is a strength, using ANAP as a donor requires the cells to be unroofed to eliminate background signal. This causes two problems. First, it removes any possible low affinity interacting proteins such as actinin (PMID 19028690). Second, the pH changes now occur to both 'extracellular' and 'intracellular' lipid planes. Thus, it is unclear if any conformational changes in the N and CTDs arise from desensitization of the receptor or protonation of specific amino acids in the N or CTDs or even protonation of certain phospholipid groups such as in phosphatidylserine. The authors do mention this caveat. But until a new approach is developed, the concerns over disruption by unroofing/washing and relevance of the changes remain.

Upon acidification, NTD position Q14 moves towards the plasma membrane (Figure 8B). Q14 also gets closer to C515 or doesn't change relative to 505 (Figures 7C and B) upon acidification. Yet position 505 moves away from the membrane (Figure 8D). It's unclear how the NTD moves closer to the membrane, and to the CTD but yet the CTD moves further from the membrane. Future experiments or approaches may refine this model.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This nice study by Miyano combines slice electrophysiology and superresolution microscopy to address the role of RBP2 in Ca2+ channel clustering and neurotransmitter release at hippocampal mossy fiber terminals. While a number of studies demonstrated a critical role for RBPs in clustering Ca2+ channels at other synapses and some provided evidence for a role of the protein in molecular coupling of Ca2+ channels and release sites, the present study targets another key synapse that is an important model for presynaptic studies and offers access to a microdomain controlled synaptic vesicle (SV) release mechanism with low initial release probability.

Summarizing a large body of high-quality work, the authors demonstrate reduced Ca2+ currents and a reduced release probability. They attribute the latter to the reduced Ca2+ influx and can restore release by increasing Ca2+ influx. Moreover, they propose an altered fusion competence of the SVs, which is not so strongly supported by the data in my view.

The effects are relatively small, but I think the careful analysis of the RBP role at the mossy fiber synapse is an important contribution.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The proper expression and organization of CaV channels at the presynaptic release sites are subject to coordinative and redundant control of many active zone-specific molecules including RIM-BPs. Previous studies have demonstrated that ablation of RIM-BPs in various mammalian synapses causes significant impairment of synaptic transmission, either by reducing CaV expression or decoupling CaV from synaptic vesicles. The mechanisms remain unknown.

In the manuscript, Sakaba and colleagues aimed to examine the specific role of RIM-BP2 at the hippocampal mossy fiber-CA3 pyramidal cell synapse, which is well-characterized by low initial release probability and strong facilitation during repetitive stimulation. By directly recording Ca2+ currents and capacitance jumps from the MF boutons, which is very challenging but feasible, they showed that depolarization-evoked Ca2+ influx was reduced significantly (~39%) by KO of RIM-BP2, but no impacts on Ca-induced exocytosis and RRP (measured by capacitance change). They used STED microscopy to image the spatial distribution of the CaV2.1 cluster but found no change in the cluster number with a slight decrease in cluster intensity (~20%). They concluded that RIM-BP2 functions in tonic synapses by reducing CaV expression and thus differentially from phasic synapses by decoupling CaV-SV.

In general, they provide solid data showing that RIM-BP2 KO reduces Ca influx at MF-CA3 synapse, but the phenotype is not new as Moser and colleagues have also used presynaptic recording and capacitance measurement and shown that RIM-BP2 KO reduces Ca2+ influx at hair cell active zone (Krinner et al., 2017), although at different synapse model expressing CaV1.3 instead of CaV2.1. Further, the concept that RIM-BP2 plays diverse functions in transmitter release at different central synapses has also been proposed with solid evidence (Brockmann et al., 2019).

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The current study provided a follow-up analysis using published datasets focused on the individual variability of both the distraction effect (size and direction) and the attribute integration style, as well as the association between the two. The authors tried to answer the question of whether the multiplicative attribute integration style concurs with a more pronounced and positively oriented distraction effect.

Strengths:<br /> The analysis extensively examined the impacts of various factors on decision accuracy, with a particular focus on using two-option trials as control trials, following the approach established by Cao & Tsetsos (2022). The statistical significance results were clearly reported.

The authors meticulously conducted supplementary examinations, incorporating the additional term HV+LV into GLM3. Furthermore, they replaced the utility function from the expected value model with values from the composite model.

Weaknesses:<br /> There are several weaknesses in terms of theoretical arguments and statistical analyses.

First, the manuscript suggests in the abstract and at the beginning of the introduction that the study reconciled the "different claims" about "whether distraction effect operates at the level of options' component attributes rather than at the level of their overall value" (see line 13-14), but the analysis conducted was not for that purpose. Integrating choice attributes in either an additive or multiplicative way only reflects individual differences in combining attributes into the overall value. The authors seemed to assume that the multiplicative way generated the overall value ("Individuals who tended to use a multiplicative approach, and hence focused on overall value", line 20-21), but such implicit assumption is at odds with the statement in line 77-79 that people may use a simpler additive rule to combine attributes, which means overall value can come from the additive rule.

The second weakness is sort of related but is more about the lack of coherent conceptual understanding of the "additive rule", or "distractor effect operates at the attribute level". In an assertive tone (lines 77-80), the manuscript suggests that a weighted sum integration procedure of implementing an "additive rule" is equal to assuming that people compare pairs of attributes separately, without integration. But they are mechanistically distinct. The additive rule (implemented using the weighted sum rule to combine probability and magnitude within each option and then applying the softmax function) assumes value exists before comparing options. In contrast, if people compare pairs of attributes separately, preference forms based on the within-attribute comparisons. Mathematically these two might be equivalent only if no extra mechanisms (such as inhibition, fluctuating attention, evidence accumulation, etc) are included in the within-attribute comparison process, which is hardly true in the three-option decision.

Could the authors comment on the generalizability of the current result? The reward magnitude and probability information are displayed using rectangular bars of different colors and orientations. Would that bias subjects to choose an additive rule instead of the multiplicative rule? Also, could the conclusion be extended to other decision contexts such as quality and price, whether a multiplicative rule is hard to formulate?

The authors did careful analyses on quantifying the "distractor effect". While I fully agree that it is important to use the matched two-option trials and examine the interaction terms (DV-HV)T as a control, the interpretation of the results becomes tricky when looking at the effects in each trial type. Figure 2c shows a positive DV-HV effect in two-option trials whereas the DV-HV effect was not significantly stronger in three-option trials. Further in Figure 5b,c, in the Multiplicative group, the effect of DV-HV was absent in the two-option trials and present in the three-option trials. In the Additive group, however, the effect of DV-HV was significantly positive in the two-option trials but was significantly lowered in the three-option trials. Hence, it seems the different distractor effects were driven by the different effects of DV-HV in the two-option trials, rather than the three-option trials?

Note that the pattern described above was different in Supplementary Figure 2, where the effect of DV-HV on the two-option trials was negative for both Multiplicative and Additive groups. I would suggest considering using Supplementary Figure 2 as the main result instead of Figure 5, as it does not rely on multiplicative EV to measure the distraction effect, and it shows the same direction of DV-HV effect on two-option trials, providing a better basis to interpret the (DV-HV)T effect.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

This paper addresses the empirical demonstration of "distractor effects" in multi-attribute decision-making. It continues a debate in the literature on the presence (or not) of these effects, which domains they arise in, and their heterogeneity across subjects. The domain of the study is a particular type of multi-attribute decision-making: choices over risky lotteries. The paper reports a re-analysis of lottery data from multiple experiments run previously by the authors and other laboratories involved in the debate.

Methodologically, the analysis assumes a number of simple forms for how attributes are aggregated (adaptively, multiplicatively, or both) and then applies a "reduced form" logistic regression to the choices with a number of interaction terms intended to control for various features of the choice set. One of these interactions, modulated by ternary/binary treatment, is interpreted as a "distractor effect."

The claimed contribution of the re-analysis is to demonstrate a correlation in the strength/sign of this treatment effect with another estimated parameter: the relative mixture of additive/multiplicative preferences.

Major Issues

1) How to Interpret GLM 1 and 2

This paper, and others before it, have used a binary logistic regression with a number of interaction terms to attempt to control for various features of the choice set and how they influence choice. It is important to recognize that this modelling approach is not derived from a theoretical claim about the form of the computational model that guides decision-making in this task, nor an explicit test for a distractor effect. This can be seen most clearly in the equations after line 321 and its corresponding log-likelihood after 354, which contain no parameter or test for "distractor effects". Rather the computational model assumes a binary choice probability and then shoehorns the test for distractor effects via a binary/ternary treatment interaction in a separate regression (GLM 1 and 2). This approach has already led to multiple misinterpretations in the literature (see Cao & Tsetsos, 2022; Webb et al., 2020). One of these misinterpretations occurred in the datasets the authors studied, in which the lottery stimuli contained a confound with the interaction that Chau et al., (2014) were interpreting as a distractor effect (GLM 1). Cao & Tsetsos (2022) demonstrated that the interaction was significant in binary choice data from the study, therefore it can not be caused by a third alternative. This paper attempts to address this issue with a further interaction with the binary/ternary treatment (GLM 2). Therefore the difference in the interaction across the two conditions is claimed to now be the distractor effect. The validity of this claim brings us to what exactly is meant by a "distractor effect."

The paper begins by noting that "Rationally, choices ought to be unaffected by distractors" (line 33). This is not true. There are many normative models that allow for the value of alternatives (even low-valued "distractors") to influence choices, including a simple random utility model. Since Luce (1959), it has been known that the axiom of "Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives" (that the probability ratio between any two alternatives does not depend on a third) is an extremely strong axiom, and only a sufficiency axiom for a random utility representation (Block and Marschak, 1959). It is not a necessary condition of a utility representation, and if this is our definition of rational (which is highly debatable), not necessary for it either. Countless empirical studies have demonstrated that IIA is falsified, and a large number of models can address it, including a simple random utility model with independent normal errors (i.e. a multivariate Probit model). In fact, it is only the multinomial Logit model that imposes IIA. It is also why so much attention is paid to the asymmetric dominance effect, which is a violation of a necessary condition for random utility (the Regularity axiom).

So what do the authors even mean by a "distractor effect." It is true that the form of IIA violations (i.e. their path through the probability simplex as the low-option varies) tells us something about the computational model underlying choice (after all, different models will predict different patterns). However we do not know how the interaction terms in the binary logit regression relate to the pattern of the violations because there is no formal theory that relates them. Any test for relative value coding is a joint test of the computational model and the form of the stochastic component (Webb et al, 2020). These interaction terms may simply be picking up substitution patterns that can be easily reconciled with some form of random utility. While we can not check all forms of random utility in these datasets (because the class of such models is large), this paper doesn't even rule any of these models out.

2) How to Interpret the Composite (Mixture) model?

On the other side of the correlation are the results from the mixture model for how decision-makers aggregate attributes. The authors report that most subjects are best represented by a mixture of additive and multiplicative aggregation models. The authors justify this with the proposal that these values are computed in different brain regions and then aggregated (which is reasonable, though raises the question of "where" if not the mPFC). However, an equally reasonable interpretation is that the improved fit of the mixture model simply reflects a misspecification of two extreme aggregation processes (additive and EV), so the log-likelihood is maximized at some point in between them.

One possibility is a model with utility curvature. How much of this result is just due to curvature in valuation? There are many reasonable theories for why we should expect curvature in utility for human subjects (for example, limited perception: Robson, 2001, Khaw, Li Woodford, 2019; Netzer et al., 2022) and of course many empirical demonstrations of risk aversion for small stakes lotteries. The mixture model, on the other hand, has parametric flexibility.

There is also a large literature on testing expected utility jointly with stochastic choice, and the impact of these assumptions on parameter interpretation (Loomes & Sugden, 1998; Apesteguia & Ballester, 2018; Webb, 2019). This relates back to the point above: the mixture may reflect the joint assumption of how choice departs from deterministic EV.

3) So then how should we interpret the correlation that the authors report?

On one side we have the impact of the binary/ternary treatment which demonstrates some impact of the low value alternative on a binary choice probability. This may reflect some deep flaws in existing theories of choice, or it may simply reflect some departure from purely deterministic expected value maximization that existing theories can address. We have no theory to connect it to, so we cannot tell. On the other side of the correlation, we have a mixture between additive and multiplicative preferences over risk. This result may reflect two distinct neural processes at work, or it may simply reflect a misspecification of the manner in which humans perceive and aggregate attributes of a lottery (or even just the stimuli in this experiment) by these two extreme candidates (additive vs. EV). Again, this would entail some departure from purely deterministic expected value maximization that existing theories can address.

It is entirely possible that the authors are reporting a result that points to the more exciting of these two possibilities. But it is also possible (and perhaps more likely) that the correlation is more mundane. The paper does not guide us to theories that predict such a correlation, nor reject any existing ones. In my opinion, we should be striving for theoretically-driven analyses of datasets, where the interpretation of results is clearer.

4) Finally, the results from these experiments might not have external validity for two reasons. First, the normative criterion for multi-attribute decision-making differs depending on whether the attributes are lotteries or not (i.e. multiplicative vs additive). Whether it does so for humans is a matter of debate. Therefore if the result is unique to lotteries, it might not be robust for multi-attribute choice more generally. The paper largely glosses over this difference and mixes literature from both domains. Second, the lottery information was presented visually and there is literature suggesting this form of presentation might differ from numerical attributes. Which is more ecologically valid is also a matter of debate.

Minor Issues:<br /> The definition of EV as a normative choice baseline is problematic. The analysis requires that EV is the normative choice model (this is why the HV-LV gap is analyzed and the distractor effect defined in relation to it). But if the binary/ternary interaction effect can be accounted for by curvature of a value function, this should also change the definition of which lottery is HV or LV for that subject!

References<br /> Apesteguia, J. & Ballester, M. Monotone stochastic choice models: The case of risk and time preferences. Journal of Political Economy (2018).

Block, H. D. & Marschak, J. Random Orderings and Stochastic Theories of Responses. Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers (1959).

Khaw, M. W., Li, Z. & Woodford, M. Cognitive Imprecision and Small-Stakes Risk Aversion. Rev. Econ. Stud. 88, 1979-2013 (2020).

Loomes, G. & Sugden, R. Testing Different Stochastic Specificationsof Risky Choice. Economica 65, 581-598 (1998).

Luce, R. D. Indvidual Choice Behaviour. (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1959).

Netzer, N., Robson, A. J., Steiner, J. & Kocourek, P. Endogenous Risk Attitudes. SSRN Electron. J. (2022) doi:10.2139/ssrn.4024773.

Robson, A. J. Why would nature give individuals utility functions? Journal of Political Economy 109, 900-914 (2001).

Webb, R. The (Neural) Dynamics of Stochastic Choice. Manage Sci 65, 230-255 (2019).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The way an unavailable (distractor) alternative impacts decision quality is of great theoretical importance. Previous work, led by some of the authors of this study, had converged on a nuanced conclusion wherein the distractor can both improve (positive distractor effect) and reduce (negative distractor effect) decision quality, contingent upon the difficulty of the decision problem. In very recent work, Cao and Tsetsos (2022) reanalyzed all relevant previous datasets and showed that once distractor trials are referenced to binary trials (in which the distractor alternative is not shown to participants), distractor effects are absent. Cao and Tsetsos further showed that human participants heavily relied on additive (and not multiplicative) integration of rewards and probabilities.

The present study by Wong et al. puts forward a novel thesis according to which interindividual differences in the way of combining reward attributes underlie the absence of detectable distractor effect at the group level. They re-analysed the 144 human participants and classified participants into a "multiplicative integration" group and an "additive integration" group based on a model parameter, the "integration coefficient", that interpolates between the multiplicative utility and the additive utility in a mixture model. They report that participants in the "multiplicative" group show a negative distractor effect while participants in the "additive" group show a positive distractor effect. These findings are extensively discussed in relation to the potential underlying neural mechanisms.

Strengths:<br />  The study is forward-looking, integrating previous findings well, and offering a novel proposal on how different integration strategies can lead to different choice biases.<br />  The authors did an excellent job of connecting their thesis with previous neural findings. This is a very encompassing perspective that is likely to motivate new studies towards a better understanding of how humans and other animals integrate information in decisions under risk and uncertainty.<br />  Despite that some aspects of the paper are very technical, methodological details are well explained and the paper is very well written.

Weaknesses:<br />  The authors quantify the distractor variable as "DV - HV", i.e., the relative distractor variable. Do the conclusions hold when the distractor is quantified in absolute terms (as "DV", see also Cao & Tsetsos, 2023)? Similarly, the authors show in Suppl. Figure 1 that the inclusion of a HV + LV regressor does not alter their conclusions. However, the (HV + LV)*T regressor was not included in this analysis. Does including this interaction term alter the conclusions considering there is a high correlation between (HV + LV)*T and (DV - HV)*T? More generally, it will be valuable if the authors assess and discuss the robustness of their findings across different ways of quantifying the distractor effect.<br />  The central finding of this study is that participants who integrate reward attributes multiplicatively show a positive distractor effect while participants who integrate additively show a negative distractor effect. This is a very interesting and intriguing observation. However, there is no explanation as to why the integration strategy covaries with the direction of the distractor effect. It is unlikely that the mixture model generates any distractor effect as it combines two "context-independent" models (additive utility and expected value) and is fit to the binary-choice trials. The authors can verify this point by quantifying the distractor effect in the mixture model. If that is the case, it will be important to highlight that the composite model is not explanatory; and defer a mechanistic explanation of this covariation pattern to future studies.<br />  Correction for multiple comparisons (e.g., Bonferroni-Holm) was not applied to the regression results. Is the "negative distractor effect in the Additive Group" (Fig. 5c) still significant after such correction? Although this does not affect the stark difference between the distractor effects in the two groups (Fig. 5a), the classification of the distractor effect in each group is important (i.e., should future modelling work try to capture both a negative and a positive effect in the two integration groups? Or just a null and a positive effect?).

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors re-analysed the data of a previous study in order to investigate the relation between asymmetries of subcortical brain structures and the hemispheric lateralization of alpha oscillations during visual spatial attention. The visual spatial attention task crossed the factors of target load and distractor salience, which made it possible to also test the specificity of the relation of subcortical asymmetries to lateralized alpha oscillations for specific attentional load conditions. Asymmetry of globus pallidus, caudate nucleus, and thalamus explained inter-individual differences in attentional alpha modulation in the left versus right hemisphere. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that the explanatory potential of these regions' asymmetries varies as a function of target load and distractor salience.

Strengths:<br /> The analysis pipeline is straightforward and follows in large parts what the authors have previously used in Mazzetti et al (2019). The authors use an interesting study design, which allows for testing of effects specific to different dimensions of attentional load (target load/distractor salience). The results are largely convincing and in part replicate what has previously been shown. The article is well-written and easy to follow.

Weaknesses:<br /> While the article is interesting to read for researchers studying alpha oscillations in spatial attention, I am somewhat sceptical about whether this article is of high interest to a broader readership. Although I read the article with interest, the conceptual advance made here can be considered mostly incremental. As the authors describe, the present study's main advance is that it does not include reward associations (as in previous work) and includes different levels of attentional load. While these design features and the obtained results indeed improve our general understanding of how asymmetries of subcortical structures relate to lateralized alpha oscillations, the conceptual advance is somewhat limited.

While the analysis of the relation of individual subcortical structures to alpha lateralization in different attentional load conditions is interesting, I am not convinced that the present analysis is suited to draw strong conclusions about the subcortical regions' specificity. For example, the Thalamus (Fig. 5) shows a significant negative beta estimate only in one condition (low-load target, non-salient distractor) but not in the other conditions. However, the actual specificity of the relation of thalamus asymmetry to lateralized alpha oscillations would require that the beta estimate for this one condition is significantly higher than the beta estimates for the other three conditions, which has not been tested as far as I understand.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, Ghafari et al. explored the correlation between hemispheric asymmetry in the volume of various subcortical regions and lateralization of posterior alpha-band oscillations in a spatial attention task with varying cognitive demands. To this end, they combined structural MRI and task MEG to investigate the relationship between hemispheric differences in the volume of basal ganglia, thalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala and hemisphere-specific modulation of alpha-band power. The authors report that differences in the thalamus, caudate nucleus, and globus pallidus volume are linked to the attention-related changes in alpha band oscillations with differential correlations for different regions in different conditions of the design (depending on the salience of the distractor and/or the target).

Strengths:<br /> The manuscript contributes to filling an important gap in current research on attention allocation which commonly focuses exclusively on cortical structures. Because it is not possible to reliably measure subcortical activity with non-invasive electrophysiological methods, they correlate volumetric measurements of the relevant subcortical regions with cortical measurements of alpha band power. Specifically, they build on their own previous finding showing a correlation between hemispheric asymmetry of basal ganglia volumes and alpha lateralization by assessing a task without an explicit reward component. Furthermore, the authors use differences in saliency and perceptual load to disentangle the individual contributions of the subcortical regions.

Weaknesses:<br /> The theoretical bases of several aspects of the design and analyses remain unclear. Specifically, we missed statements in the introduction about why it is reasonable, from a theoretical perspective, to expect:<br /> (i) a link between volumetric measurements and task activity;<br /> (ii) a specific link with hemispheric asymmetry in subcortical structures (While focusing on hemispheric lateralization might circumvent the problem of differences in head size, it would be better to justify this focus theoretically, which requires for example a short review of evidence showing ipsilateral vs contralateral connections between the relevant subcortical and cortical structures);<br /> (iii) effects not only in basal ganglia and thalamus, but also hippocampus and amygdala (a justification of selection of all ROIs);<br /> (iv) effects that depend on distractor versus target salience (a rationale for the specific two-factor design is missing);<br /> (v) effects in the absence of reward (why it is important to show that the effect seen previously in a task with reward is seen also in a task without reward);<br /> (vi) effects on rapid frequency tagging.

Second, the results are not fully reported. The model space and the results from the model comparison are omitted. Behavioral data and rapid frequency tagging results are not shown. Without having access to the data or the results of the analyses, the reader cannot evaluate whether the null effect corresponds to the absence of evidence or (as claimed in the discussion) evidence of absence.

Third, it remains unclear whether the MMS is the best approach to analyzing effects as a function of target and distractor salience. To address the question of whether the effects of subcortical volumes on alpha lateralization vary with task demands (which we assume is the primary research question of interest, given the factorial design), we would like to evaluate some sort of omnibus interaction effect, e.g., by having target and distractor saliency interact with the subcortical volume factors to predict alpha lateralization. Without such analyses, the results are very hard to interpret. What are the implications of finding the differential effects of the different volumes for the different task conditions without directly assessing the effect of the task manipulation? Moreover, the report would benefit from a further breakdown of the effects into simple effects on unattended and attended alpha, to evaluate whether effects as a function of distractor (vs target) salience are indeed accompanied by effects on unattended (vs attended) alpha.

The fourth concern is that the discussion section is not quite ready to help the reader appreciate the implications of key aspects of the findings. What are the implications for our understanding of the roles of different subcortical structures in the various psychological component processes of spatial attention? Why does the volumetric asymmetry of different subcortical structures have diametrically opposite effects on alpha lateralization? Instead, the discussion section highlights that the different subcortical structures are connected in circuits: "Globus pallidus also has wide projections to the thalamus and can thereby impact the dorsal attentional networks by modulating prefrontal activities." If this is true, then why does the effect of the GP dissociate from that of the thalamus? Also, what is it about the current behavioural paradigm that makes the behavioral readout insensitive to variation in subcortical volume (or alpha lateralization?)?

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> These types of analyses use many underlying assumptions about the data, which are not easy to verify. Hence, one way to test how the algorithm is performing in a task is to study its performance on synthetic data in which the properties of the variable of interest can be apriori fixed. For example, for burst detection, synthetic data can be generated by injected bursts of known durations, and checking if the algorithm is able to pick it up. Burst detection is difficult in the spectral domain since direct spectral estimators have high variance (see Subhash Chandran et al., 2018, J Neurophysiol). Therefore, detected burst lengths are typically much lower than injected burst lengths (see Figure 3). This problem can be solved by doing burst estimation in the time domain itself, for example, using Matching Pursuit (MP). I think the approach presented in this paper would also work since this model is also trained on data in the time domain. Indeed, the synthetic data can be made more "challenging" by injecting multiple oscillatory bursts that are overlapping in time, for which a greedy approach like MP may fail. It would be very interesting to test whether this method can "keep up" as the data is made more challenging. While showing results from brain signals directly (e.g., Figure 7) is nice, it will be even more impactful if it is backed up with results obtained from synthetic data with known properties.

I was wondering about what kind of "synthetic data" could be used for the results shown in Figure 8-12 but could not come up with a good answer. Perhaps data in which different sensory systems are activated (visual versus auditory) or sensory versus movement epochs are compared to see if the activation maps change as expected. We see similarities between states across multiple runs (reproducibility analysis) and across tasks (e.g. Figure 8 vs 9) and even methods (Figure 8 vs 10), which is great. However, we should also expect the emergence of new modes specific to sensory activation (say auditory cortex for an auditory task). This will allow us to independently check the performance of this method.

The authors should explain the reproducibility results (variational free energy and best run analysis) in the Results section itself, to better orient the reader on what to look for.

Page 15: the comparison across subjects is interesting, but it is not clear why sensory-motor areas show a difference and the mean lifetime of the visual network decreases. Can you please explain this better? The promised discussion in section 3.5 can be expanded as well.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors have developed a comprehensive set of tools to describe dynamics within a single time-series or across multiple time-series. The motivation is to better understand interacting networks within the human brain. The time-series used here are from direct estimates of the brain's electrical activity; however, the tools have been used with other metrics of brain function and would be applicable to many other fields.

Strengths:<br /> The methods described are principled, and based on generative probabilistic models.<br /> This makes them compact descriptors of the complex time-frequency data.<br /> Few initial assumptions are necessary in order to reveal this compact description.<br /> The methods are well described and demonstrated within multiple peer-reviewed articles.<br /> This toolbox will be a great asset to the brain imaging community.

Weaknesses:<br /> The only question I had was how to objectively/quantitatively compare different network models. This is possibly easily addressed by the authors.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this manuscript, Ketaren, Mast, Fridy et al. assessed the ability of a previously generated llama nanobody library (Mast, Fridy et al. 2021) to bind and neutralize SARS-CoV-2 delta and omicron variants. The authors identified multiple nanobodies that retain neutralizing and/or binding capacity against delta, BA.1 and BA.4/5. Nanobody epitope mapping on spike proteins using structural modeling revealed possible mechanisms of immune evasion by viral variants as well as mechanisms of cross-variant neutralization by nanobodies. The authors additionally identified two nanobody pairs involving non-neutralizing nanobodies that exhibited synergy in neutralization against the delta variant. These results enabled the refinement of target epitopes of the nanobody repertoire and the discovery of several pan-variant nanobodies for further preclinical development.

Strengths:<br /> Overall, this study is well executed and provides a valuable framework for assessing the impact of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants on nanobodies using a combination of in vitro biochemical and cellular assays as well as computational approaches. There are interesting insights generated from the epitope mapping analyses, which offer possible explanations for how delta and omicron variants escape nanobody responses, as well as how some nanobodies exhibit cross-variant neutralization capacity. These analyses laid out a clear path forward for optimizing these promising next-gen therapeutics, particularly in the face of rapidly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. This work will be of interest to researchers in the fields of antibody/nanobody engineering, SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics, and host-virus interaction.

Weaknesses:<br /> A main weakness of the study is that the efficacy statement is not thoroughly supported. While the authors comprehensively characterized the neutralizing ability of nanobodies in vitro, there is no animal data involving mice or hamsters to demonstrate the real protective efficacy in vivo. Yet, in the title and throughout the manuscript, the authors repeatedly used phrases like "retains efficacy" or "remains efficacious" to describe the nanobodies' neutralization or binding capacities. This claim is not well supported by the data and underestimates the impact of variants on the nanobodies, especially the omicron sublineages. For example, the authors showed that S1-RBD-15 had a ~100-fold reduction in neutralization titer against Omicron, with an IC50 at around 1 uM. This is much higher than the IC50 value of a typical anti-ancestral RBD nanobody reported in the previous study (Mast, Fridy et al. 2021). In fact, the authors themselves ascribe nanobodies with an IC50 above 1 uM as weak neutralizers. And there were many in the range of 0.1-1 uM. Furthermore, many nanobodies selected for affinity measurement against BA.4/5 had no detectable binding. Without providing in vivo protection data or including monoclonal antibodies that are known to be efficacious against variants in the in vitro assays as a benchmark, it is difficult to evaluate the efficacy just with the IC50 values.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Interest in using nanobodies for therapeutic interventions in infectious diseases is growing due to their ability to bind hidden or cryptic epitopes that are inaccessible to conventional immunoglobulins. In the present study, the authors were posed to characterize nanobodies derived from the library produced earlier with the Wuhan strain of SARS-CoV-2, map their epitopes on SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and demonstrate that some nanobodies retain binding and even neutralization against antigenically distant Variants of Concern (VOCs) that are currently circulating.

Strengths:<br /> The authors demonstrate that some nanobodies - despite being obtained against the ancestral virus strain - retain high affinity binding to antigenically distant SARS-CoV-2 strains. This is despite the majority of the repertoire losing binding. Although limited to only two nanobody combinations, the demonstration of synergy in virus neutralization between nanobodies targeting different epitopes is compelling.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors imply that nanobodies that retain binding/neutralization of early Omicron sublineages will be active against currently circulating and future virus strains. Unfortunately, no reasoning for such a conclusion nor data supporting this prediction are provided.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Papalamprou et al. established a methodology to differentiate iPSCs to the syndetome stage and validated it by marker gene expression and scRNA-seq analysis. They further found that inhibition of WNT signaling enhanced the homogeneity of the cell population after identifying a group of braching-off cells that overexpressed WNT. Their results will be helpful in developing cell therapy systems for tendon injuries. However, there are several issues to improve the manuscript:

IPA analysis was performed after scRNA-seq. Although it is knowledge-based software with convenient graphic utilities, it is questionable whether an unbiased genome-level analysis was performed. Therefore, it is not convincing if WNT is the only and best signal for the branching-off marker. Perhaps independent approaches, such as GO, pathway, or module analyses, should be performed to validate the finding.

According to the method section, two iPSC lines were used for the study. However, throughout the manuscript, it is not clearly described which line was used for which experiment. Did they show similar efficiency in differentiation and in responses to WNTi? It is also worrisome if using only two lines is the norm in the stem cell field. Please provide a rationale for using only two lines, which will restrict the observation of individual-specific differential responses throughout the study.

How similar are syndetome cells with or without WNTi? It would be interesting to check if there are major DEGs that differentiate these two groups of cells.

Please discuss the improvement of the current study compared to previous ones (e.g., PMID 36203346, 35083031, 35372337).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Dr. Sheyn and colleagues report the step-wise induction of syndetome-like cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), following a previously published protocol which they adjusted. The progression of the cells through each stage, i.e. presomitic mesoderm (PSM), somitic mesoderm (SM), sclerotome (SCL), and syndetome (SYN)) is characterized using FACS, RT-qPCR and immunofluorescence staining (IF). The authors also performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) analysis of their step-wise induced cells and identified signaling pathways which are potentially involved in and possibly necessary for syndetome induction. They then optimized their protocol by simultaneous inhibition of BMP and Wnt signaling pathways, which led to an increase in syndetome induction while inhibiting off-target differentiation into neural lineages.

Strengths:<br /> The authors conducted scRNAseq analysis of each step of their protocol from iPSCs to syndetome-like cells and employed pathway analysis to uncover further insights into somitic mesoderm (SM) and syndetome (SYN) differentiation. They found that BMP inhibition, in conjunction with the inhibition of WNT signaling, plays a role in driving syndetome differentiation. Analyzing their scRNAseq results, they could improve the syndetome induction efficiency of their protocol from 47.6% to 67%-78% while off-target differentiation into neural lineages could be reduced.

Weaknesses:<br /> The authors demonstrated the efficiency of syndetome induction solely by scRNA-seq data analysis before and after pathway inhibition, without using e.g. FACS analysis or immunofluorescence (IF)-staining based assessment. A functional assessment and validation of the induced cells is also completely missing.

The following points are not clear and need to be addressed by the authors:<br /> 1. Notably, in Figure 1D, certain PSM markers (TBXT, MSGN1, WNT3A) show higher expression on day 3. If the authors initiate SM induction on day 3 instead of day 4, could this potentially enhance the efficiency of syndetome-like cell induction?

2. In the third paragraph of the result section the authors note, "Interestingly, SCX, a prominent tenogenic transcription factor, was significantly downregulated at the SCL stage compared to iPSC, but upregulated during the differentiation from SCL to SYN." Despite this increase, the expression level of SCX in SYN remains lower than that in iPSCs in Fig.1G and Fig.3C. Can the authors provide an explanation for this? Can the authors provide IF data using iPSCs and compare it with in vitro-induced SYN cells? Can the authors provide e.g. additional scRNAseq data which could support this statement?

3. In the fourth paragraph of the result section the authors state, "SM markers (MEOX1, PAX3) and SCL markers (PAX1, PAX9, NKX3.2, SOX9) were upregulated in a stepwise manner." However, the data for MEOX1 and NKX3.2 seems to be missing from Figure 3B-C. The authors should provide this data and/or additional support for their claim.

4. In Figures 2B and 2E, the background of the red channel seems extremely high. Are there better images available, particularly for MEOX1? Given the expected high expression of MEOX1 in SM cells, the authors should observe a strong signal in the nucleus of the stained somitic mesoderm-like cells, but that is not the case in the shown figure. The authors should provide separate channel images instead of merged ones for clarity. The antibody which the authors used might not be specific. Can the authors provide images using an antibody which has been shown to work previously e.g. antibody by ATLAS (Cat#: HPA045214)?

5. In Fig. 2C and Supplementary Fig. 1, the authors present data from immunofluorescence (IF) staining and FACS analysis using a DLL1 antibody. While FACS analysis indicates an efficiency of 96.2% for DLL1+ cells, this was not clearly observed in their IF data. How can the authors explain this discrepancy? Could the authors quantify their IF data and compare it with the corresponding FACS data?

6. In Fig. 2G, PAX9 is expected to be expressed in the nucleus, but the shown IF staining does not appear to be localized to the nucleus. Could the authors provide improved or alternative images to clarify this? The authors should use antibodies shown to work with high specificity as already reported by other groups.

7. Why did the authors choose to display day 10 data for SYN induction in Fig. 4A? Could they provide information about the endpoint of their culture at day 21?

8. In Supplementary Fig. 5, the authors depicted the expression level of SCX, a SYN marker, which peaked at day 14 and then decreased. By day 21, it reached a level comparable to that of iPSCs. Given this observation, could the authors provide a characterization of the cells at day 21 during SYN induction using IF? What was the rationale behind selecting 21 days for SYN induction? The authors also need to show 'n numbers'; how many times were the experiments repeated independently (independent experiments)?<br /> 9. Overall the shown immunofluorescence (IF) data does not appear convincing. Could the authors please provide clearer images, including separate channel images, a bright field image, and magnified views of each staining?

10. As stated by the authors in the manuscript, another research group performed FACS analysis to assess the efficiency of syndetome induction using SCX antibody, and/or quantification of immunofluorescence (IF) with SCX, MKX, COL1A1, or COL2A1 antibodies. Could the authors conduct a comparative analysis of syndetome induction efficiency both before and after protocol optimization, utilizing FACS analysis in conjunction with an SCX reporter line or antibody staining, e.g. quantifying induction efficiency via immunofluorescence (IF) staining with syndetome-specific marker genes?

11. To enhance the paper's significance, the authors should conduct functional validation experiments and proper assessment of their induced syndetome-like cells. They could perform e.g. xeno-transplantation experiments with syndetome cells into SCID-mice or injury models. They could also assess whether the in vitro induced cells could be applied for in vitro tendon/ligament formation.

12. The authors should also compare their scRNA-seq data with actual human embryo data sets, something which could be done given the recent increase in available human embryo scRNA-seq data sets.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Papalamprou et al sought to fine-tune existing tenogenic differentiation protocols to develop a robust multi-step differentiation protocol to induce tendon cells from human GMP-ready iPSCs. In so doing, they found that while existing protocols are capable of driving cells towards a syndetome-like fate, the resultant cultures contain highly heterogeneous cell populations with sub-optimal cell survival. Through single-cell transcriptomic analysis, they identify WNT signaling as a potential driver of an off-target neural population and show that inhibition of WNT signaling at the later 2 stages of differentiation can be used to promote higher efficiency of generation of syndetome-like cells.

This paper includes a useful paradigm for identifying transcriptional modulators of cell fate during differentiation and a clear example where transcriptional data can be used to guide the chemical modulation of a differentiation protocol to improve cell output. The paper's conclusions are mostly well supported by the data, but the image analysis and figure presentation need to be improved to strengthen the impact.

The data outlining the differences between the differentiation outcome of the two tested iPSCs is intriguing, but the authors fail to comment on potential differences between the two iPSC lines that could result in drastically different cell outputs from the same differentiation protocol. This is a critically important point, as the majority of the SCX+ cells generated from the 007i cells using their WNTi protocol were found in the FC subpopulation that failed to form from the 83i line under the same protocol. From the analysis of only these 2 cell lines in vitro, it is difficult to assess whether this WNTi protocol can be broadly used to generate tenogenic cells.

The authors make claims to changes in protein expression but fail to quantify either fluorescence intensity or percent cell expression from their immunofluorescence analyses to substantiate these claims. These claims are not fully supported by the data as presented as it is unclear whether there is increased expression of tendon markers at the protein level or more cells surviving the protocol. Additionally, in images where 3 channels are merged, it would be helpful to show individual channels where genes are shown in similar spectra (ie. Fig 2I SCX/MKX). Furthermore, the current layout and labelling scheme of Figure 4 makes it very difficult to compare conditions between SYN and SYNWNTi protocols.

Individual data points should also be presented for all qPCR experiments (ie. Fig 4A). Biological replicate information is missing from several experiments, particularly the immunofluorescence data, and it is unclear whether the qPCR data was generated from technical or biological replicates.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Genetic, physiological, and environmental manipulations that increase roaming increase leaving rates. The connection between increased roaming and increased leaving is lost when tax4-expressing sensory neurons are inactivated. This study is conceptually important in its characterization of worm behaviors as time-series of discrete states, a promising framework for understanding behavioral decisions as algorithms that govern state transitions. This framework is well-established in other animals, but relatively new to worms.

A key discovery is that lawn leaving behavior is probabilistically favored in states of behavioral arousal. I like the use of response-triggered averages (triggered on leaving events) that illustrate a "state-dependent receptive field" of the behavioral response. Response-triggered averages are common in sensory neuroscience, used, for example, to characterize the diverse "stimulus-dependent receptive fields" of different retinal ganglion cell types. It's nice to adapt the idea to illustrate the state-dependence of behavioral state transitions.

The simplest metric of arousal state is crawling speed. When animals crawl faster, they are more likely to leave lawns. A more sophisticated metric of behavioral context is whether the animal is in a "roaming" or "dwelling" state, two-state HMM modeling from previous work (Flavell et al., 2013). Roaming animals are more likely to leave lawns than dwelling animals. Different autoregressive HMM tools can segment worm behavior into 4-states. Also with ARHMMs, the most aroused state is again the state that promotes lawn-leaving. HMM analysis disentangles effects that were lumped by the simpler metric of overall speed.

The authors use diverse environmental, genetic, and optogenetic perturbations to regulate the roaming state, thereby regulating the statistics of leaving in the expected manner. One surprise is that feeding inhibition evokes roaming and lawn-leaving in both pdfr-1 and tph-1 mutants, even though the tph-1-expressing NSM neurons have been shown to sense bacterial ingestion and food availability.

Another surprise is that evoking roaming does not evoke leaving in tax-4 mutants. Without sensory neuron activity, worms are only more likely to roam for a minute before leaving rather than roaming for several minutes before leaving like wild-type (Figure 6C). ASJ seems to be the most important sensory neuron in this coupling between roaming and leaving (which is uncoupled when sensory neurons are inactivated).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Here, the authors use quantitative behavioral analyses to describe in unprecedented detail the various behavioral choices animals make when encountering the lawn edge. They report that leaving the lawn is a rare outcome compared to other choices such as pausing or reversing back into the lawn. It occurs predominantly out of the roaming state and has a characteristic preceding fast crawling profile. They developed a refined analysis method, the result of which suggests that the arousal state of animals on food can be described by a 4-state behavior (as opposed to the 2-state roaming - dwelling classification); leaving the lawn occurs predominantly from "state 3", which corresponds to the highest level of arousal during roaming. They further show that various manipulations, such as optogenetic inhibition of feeding, stimulation of RIB neurons, or mutations of neuromodulator pathways, all of which have previously been reported to affect crawling speed and/or roaming/dwelling, maintain the coupling between roaming states and leaving, suggesting a dedicated mechanism for coupling leaving to the roaming state. Finally, they use genetics to implicate chemosensory neurons as neuronal circuit elements mediating this coupling.

How arousal states affect decision making is an active area of neuroscience research; therefore, the current manuscript will impact the field beyond the small community of C. elegans researchers. Also, in the past, roaming/dwelling and leaving have been treated as independent behaviors; the current manuscript is very intriguing, demonstrating both the interconnectedness of different behavioral programs and the importance of the animal's behavioral context for specific decisions.

In this current revision and, the authors have made a good effort at addressing most of my previous comments, especially to clarify the sample sizes and how independent assays were performed.

My major concern, however, remains: when leaving animals apparently accelerate their locomotion speed starting about 30s prior to the leaving events (Fig. 2A, D, G). By the authors' analysis, these episodes are assigned to roaming or 'state 3'. Note, that even within these states the behavior seems to be distinctively faster than baseline roaming- or 'state 3'- speed (Fig. 2A, D, G). If leaving is indeed preceded by a stereotypic acceleration phase, this phase should be assigned to the leaving event, not to roaming or 'state 3'. If this is done, the distribution of roaming dwelling states prior to acceleration-leaving could get closer to 50/50 (draw a vertical line at 30s onto Figure 2C, and then count the fraction of prior roaming-dwelling states). I would conclude that the probability of leaving is also high out of the dwelling-state. This interpretation challenges the major conclusion of the study, which is that the roaming behavioral state is a major determinant of the leaving decision. The analysis in Figure 2 S1E shows interesting results hinting that leaving is indeed not fully independent of the roaming history, but does not directly address the issue described above.

I think that the work is otherwise overall very well done and the results are extremely interesting. But I would interpret the results differently unless the authors provide a more tailored analysis that rules out my concern.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Scheer and Bargmann use a combination of computational and experimental approaches in C.elegans to investigate the neuronal mechanisms underlying the regulation of foraging decisions by the state of arousal. They showed that, in C.elegans, the decision to leave food substrates is linked to a high arousal state, roaming, and that an increase in speed at different timescales preceded the food leaving decisions. They found that mutants that exhibit increased roaming also leave food substrates more frequently and that both behaviors can be triggered if food intake is inhibited. They further identify a set of chemosensory neurons that express the transduction channel tax-4 that couple the roaming state and the food-leaving decisions. The authors postulate that these neurons integrate foraging decisions with behavioral states and internal feeding cues.

The strength of the paper relies on using quantitative and detailed behavioral analysis over multiple time scales in combination with manipulation of genes and neuron to tackle the state-dependent control of behavioral decisions in C. elegans. The evidence is convincing, the analysis rigorous, and the writing is clear and to the point.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This manuscript by Kelly et al. reports results from single-cell transcriptomic analysis of spinal neurons in zebrafish. The work builds on a strong foundation of literature and the objective, to discern gene expression patterns specializing functionally distinct motor circuits, is well rationalized. Specifically, they compared the transcriptomes in the escape and swimming circuits.

The authors discovered, in the motor neurons of the escape circuit, two functional groups or "cassettes" of genes related to excitability and vesicle release, respectively. Expression of these genes make sense for a "fast" circuit. This finding will be important to the field and form the basis for subsequent studies differentiating the escape circuit from others.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary: Kelly et al. strategically leverage the unique strengths of the zebrafish larval model and scRNA-seq to uncover genes that determine the stereotypic output of different neuronal circuits. The results lead to the identification of ion channel and synapse associated genes that distinguish a fast reliable neuronal circuit.

Strengths:<br /> - Well-established neuronal markers allow the transcriptomic analyses to match a majority of the transcriptomic clusters to specific spinal neuron subtypes.<br /> - One transcriptomic cluster reveals the presence in zebrafish of a spinal neuron subtype previously identified in mammals.<br /> - The primary motor neuron and specific interneurons of the circuit mediating strong and fast swimming share expression of cassettes of ion channel and synapse-related gene cassette that sculpt fast and strong synaptic transmission.<br /> - Results are optimally placed in the context of the rich background and literature regarding zebrafish spinal neuron physiology.

Weaknesses:<br /> -The revised version has addressed previous concerns.

Likely Impact:<br /> - The ion channel and synapse-related gene cassettes that distinguish the primary motor neuron circuit are shared with some mammalian circuits that also generate fast, reliable synaptic transmission.<br /> - The transcriptomic data have been deposited in the publicly accessible Gene Expression Omnibus allowing others to mine the rich data set that also included glial cells that were not the focus of this study.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Functional and anatomical studies of spinal circuitry in vertebrates have formed the basis of our understanding of neuronal control of movements. Larval zebrafish provide a simplified system for deciphering spinal circuitry. In this manuscript, the authors performed scRNAseq on spinal cord neurons in larval zebrafish, identifying major classes of neuronal and glial types. Through transcriptome analysis, they validated several key interneuron types previously implicated in zebrafish locomotion circuitry. The authors went beyond identifying transcriptional markers and explored synaptic molecules associated with the strength of motor output. They discovered molecular distinctions causally related to the unique physiology of primary motoneuron (PMn) function, which involves providing strong synaptic outputs for escapes and fast swimming. They defined functional 'cassettes' comprising specific combinations of voltage-dependent ion channel types and synaptic proteins, likely responsible for generating maximal motor outputs.

Comments on revised version:

"However, the reviewer interprets Figure 2c to show that Type I, not Type II, V2a is more highly recruited over the range of higher swimming speeds whereas we conclude just the opposite."

BRE: The preceding is the authors' response to the Reviewer's critique of Version 1 of the manuscript and refers to Figure 2C of Menelaou and McLean, Nat Commun. 10:4197, 2019; PMID: 31519892; PMCID: PMC6744451. Below the Reviewer's second critique elaborates on this point. The authors chose not to modify the manuscript further.

This is not what I would like to maintain in my previous report. Both Type I and Type II V2a neurons are recruited during very fast swimming (70 Hz). The degree of the de-recruitment of Type I V2a neurons during slower swimming (40-60 Hz) is larger than Type II. Thus, what I would like to say is that Type I V2a neurons are more analogous to PMns than Type II V2a neurons (Both PMns and SMns are recruited during very fast swimming, and PMns tend to be de-recruited during slower swimming).

In this sense, I don't like the author's way of relating Type II V2a neurons to escapes and very fast swimming. However, if the authors insist on the current form of the manuscript, I do not strongly object.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Muller glia function as retinal stem cells in the adult zebrafish retina. Following retinal injury, Muller glia are reprogrammed (reactive Muller glia), and then divide to produce a progenitor that amplifies and differentiates into retinal neurons. Previous scRNAseq analysis used total retinal RNA from uninjured and injured retinas isolated at time points when Muller glia are quiescent, being reprogrammed, and proliferating to reveal genes and gene regulatory networks underlying these events (Hoang et al., 2020). The manuscript by Celotto et al., used double transgenic zebrafish that allow them to purify by FACS quiescent and reactive Muller glia, Muller glia-derived progenitors, and their differentiating progeny at different times post retinal damage. RNA from these cell populations was used in scRNAseq studies to identify the transcriptomes associated with these cell populations. Importantly, they report two quiescent and two reactive Muller glia populations. These results raise the interesting possibility that Muller glia are a heterogeneous population whose members may exhibit different regenerative responses to retinal injury. However, without further experimentation, the validity and significance of this result remain unclear. In addition to putative Muller cell heterogeneity, Celotto et al., identified multiple progenitor classes, some of which are specified to regenerate specific retinal neuron types. Because of its focus on Muller glia and Muller glia-derived progenitors at mid to late stages of retina regeneration, this new scRNAseq data will be a useful resource to the research community for further interrogation of gene expression changes underlying retina regeneration.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

In this publication, the authors provide a comprehensive trajectory of transcriptional changes in Müller glia cells (MG) in the regenerating retina of zebrafish. These resident glia cells of the retina can differentiate into all neural cell classes following injury, providing full regenerative capabilities of the zebrafish retina. The authors achieved this by using single-cell RNA sequencing of Müller glia, progenitors, and regenerated progeny, comparing uninjured and light-lesioned retinae.

The isolation strategy involves using two transgenic strains, one labelling dividing cells and their immediate progeny, and the other Müller glia cells. This allowed them to separate injury-induced proliferating and non-reactive Müller glia cells. Subsequent single-cell transcriptomics showed that MG could be non-reactive under both uninjured and lesioned conditions and reactive MG gives rise to a cell population that both replenishes the pool of MG and replenishes neurogenic retinal precursor cells. These precursor cells produce regenerated neurons in a developmental time series with ganglion cells being born first and bipolar cells being born last. Interestingly hybrid populations have been detected that co-share characteristics of photoreceptor precursors and reactive glia.

This is the first study of its kind following the dynamic changes of transcriptional changes during retinal regeneration, providing a rich data source of genes involved in regeneration. Their finding of transcriptionally separable MG populations is intriguing.

This study focuses on the light-lesioned retina and leaves open the question if the observed transcriptional trajectories of regenerating neurons are generalizable to other lesion models (e.g. chemical or mutational lesions) or are specific to the light-damaged retina.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

The process of taste perception is significantly more intricate and complex in Lepidopteran insects. This investigation provides valuable insights into the role of Gustatory receptors and their dynamics in the sensation of sucrose, which serves as a crucial feeding cue for insects. The article highlights the differential sensitivity of Grs to sucrose and their involvement in feeding and insect behavior.

Strengths:

To support the notion of the differential specificity of Gr to sucrose, this study employed electrophysiology, ectopic expression of Grs in Xenopus, genome editing, and behavioral studies on insects. This investigation offers a fundamental understanding of the gustation process in lepidopteran insects and its regulation of feeding and other gustation-related physiological responses. This study holds significant importance in advancing our comprehension of lepidopteran insect biology, gustation, and feeding behavior.

Weaknesses:

While this manuscript demonstrates technical proficiency, there exists an opportunity for additional refinement to optimize comprehensibility for the intended audience. Several crucial sugars have been overlooked in the context of electrophysiology studies and should be incorporated. Furthermore, it is imperative to consider the potential off-target effects of Gr knock-out on other Gr expressions. This investigation focuses exclusively on Gr6 and Gr10, while neglecting a comprehensive narrative regarding other Grs involved in sucrose sensation.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:

To identify sugar receptors and assess the capacity of these genes the authors first set out to identify behavioral responses in larvae and adults as well as physiological response. They used phylogenetics and gene expression (RNAseq) to identify candidates for sugar reception. Using first an in vitro oocyte system they assess the responses to distinct sugars. A subsequent genetic analysis shows that the Gr10 and Gr6 genes provide stage specific functions in sugar perception.

Strengths:

A clear strength of the manuscript is the breadth of techniques employed allowing a comprehensive study in a non-canonical model species.

Weaknesses:

There are no major weaknesses in the study for the current state of knowledge in this species. Since it is much basic work to establish a broader knowledge, context with other modalities remains unknown. It might have been possible to probe certain contexts known from the fruit fly, which would have strengthened the manuscript.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this study, the authors combine electrophysiology, behavioural analyses, and genetic editing techniques on the cotton bollworm to identify the molecular basis of sugar sensing in this species.

The larval and adult forms of this species feed on different plant parts. Larvae primarily consume leaves, which have relatively lower sugar concentrations, while adults feed on nectar, rich in sugar. Through a series of experiments-spanning electrophysiological recordings from both larval and adult sensillae, qPCR expression analysis of identified GRs from these sensillae, response profiles of these GRs to various sugars via heterologous expression in Xenopus oocytes, and evaluations of CRISPR mutants based on these parameters-the authors discovered that larvae and adults employ distinct GRs for sugar sensing. While the larva uses the highly sensitive GR10a, the adult uses the less sensitive and broadly tuned GR6. This differential use of GRs are in keeping with their behavioural ecology.

The data are cohesive and consistently align across the methodologies employed. They are also well presented and the manuscript is clearly written.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> DAVID syndrome is a rare autosomal dominant disorder characterized by variable immune dysfunction and variable ACTH deficiency. Nine different families have been reported, and all have heterozygous mutations in NFKB2. The mechanism of NFKB2 action in the immune systems has been well-studied, but nothing is known about its role in the pituitary gland.

The DAVID mutations cluster in the C-terminus of the NFKB2 and interfere with cleavage and nuclear translocation. The mutations are likely dominant negative, by affecting dimer function. ACTH deficiency can be life-threatening in neonates and adults, thus, understanding the mechanism of NFKB2 action in pituitary development and/or function is important.

The authors use CRISPR/Cas gene editing of human iPSC-derived pituitary-hypothalamic organoids to assess the function of NFKB2 and TBX19 in pituitary development. Mutations in TBX19 are the most common, known cause of pituitary ACTH deficiency, and the mechanism of action has been studied in mice, which phenocopy the human condition. Thus, the TBX19 organoids can serve as a positive control. The Nfkb2 mouse model has a p.Y868* mutation that impairs cleavage of NFKB2 p100, and the immune phenotype mimics the patients with DAVID mutations, but no pituitary phenotype was evident. Thus, a human organoid model might be the only approach suitable to discover the etiology of the pituitary phenotype.

Overall, the authors have selected an important problem, and the results suggest that the pituitary insufficiency in DAVID syndrome is caused by a developmental defect rather than an autoimmune hypophysitis condition. The use of gene editing in human iPSC-derived hypothalamic-pituitary organoids is significant, as there is only one example of this previously, namely studies on OTX2. Only a few laboratories have demonstrated the ability to differentiate iPSC or ES cells to these organoids, and the authors have improved the efficiency of differentiation, which is also significant.

The strength of the evidence is excellent. However, the two ACTH-deficient organoid models use a single genetically engineered clone, and the potential for variability amongst clones makes the conclusions less compelling. Since the authors obtained two independent clones for NFKB2 it is not clear why only one clone was studied. Finally, the effect of TBX19 on early pituitary fate markers is somewhat surprising given the phenotype of the knockout mice and patients with mutations. Thus, the use of a single clone for that study is also worrisome.

Strengths:<br /> The authors make mutations in TBX19 and NFKB2 that exist in affected patients. The TBX19 p.K146R mutation is recessive and causes isolated ACTH deficiency. Mutations in this gene account for 2/3 of isolated ACTH deficiency cases. The NFKB2 p.D865G mutation is heterozygous in a patient with recurrent infections and isolated ACTH deficiency. NFKB2 mutations are a rare cause of ACTH deficiency, and they can be associated with the loss of other pituitary hormones in some cases. However, all reported cases are heterozygous.

The developmental studies of organoid differentiation seem rigorous in that 200 organoids were generated for each hiPSC line, and 3-10 organoids were analyzed for each time point and genotype. Differentiation analysis relied on both RNA transcript measurements and immunohistochemistry of cleared organoids using light sheet microscopy. Multiple time points were examined, including seven times for gene expression at the RNA level and two times in the later stages of differentiation for IHC.<br /> TBX19 deficient organoids exhibit reduced levels of PITX1, LHX3, and POMC (ACTH precursor) expression at the RNA and IHC level, and there are fewer corticotropes in the organoids, as ascertained by POMC IHC.

The NFKB2 deficient organoids have a normal expression of the early pituitary transcription factor HESX1, but reduced expression of PITX2, LHX3, and POMC. Because there is no immune component in the organoid, this shows that NFKB2 mutations can affect corticotrope differentiation to produce POMC. RNA sequencing analysis of the organoids reveals potential downstream targets of NFKB2 action, including a potential effect on epithelial-to-mesenchymal-like transition and selected pituitary and hypothalamic transcription factors and signaling pathways.

Weaknesses:<br /> There could be variation between individual iPSC lines that is unrelated to the genetically engineered change. While the authors check for off-target effects of the guide RNA at predicted sites using WGS, a better control would be to have independently engineered clones or to correct the engineered clone to wild type and show that the phenotypic effects are reversed.

All NFKB2 patients are heterozygous for what appear to be dominant negative mutations that affect protein cleavage and nuclear localization of processed protein as homo or heterdimers. The organoids are homozygous for this mutation. Supplemental Figure 4 indicates that one heterozygous clone and two homozygous mutant clones were obtained. Analysis of these additional clones would give more strength to the conclusions, showing reproducibility and the effect of mutant gene dosage.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This manuscript by Mac et al addresses the causes of pituitary dysfunction in patients with DAVID syndrome which is caused by mutations in the NFKB2 gene and leads to ACTH deficiency. The authors seek to determine whether the mutation directly leads to altered pituitary development, as opposed to an autoimmune defect, by using mutating human iPSCs and then establishing organoids that differentiate into pituitary tissue. They first seek to validate the system using a well-characterised mutation of the transcription factor TBX19, which also results in ACTH deficiency in patients. Then they characterise altered pituitary cell differentiation in mutant NFKB2 organoids and show that these lack corticotrophs, which would lead to ACTH deficiency.

Strengths:<br /> The conclusion of the paper that ACTH deficiency in DAVID syndrome is independent of an autoimmune input is strong.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The authors correctly emphasise the importance of establishing the validity of an iPSC-based model in being able to recapitulate in vivo dysfunctional pituitary development through characterisation of a TBX19 knock-in mutation. Whilst this leads to the expected failure of functional corticotroph differentiation, other aspects of the normal pituitary differentiation pathway upstream of corticotroph commitment seem to have been affected in surprising ways. In particular, the loss of LHX3 and PITX1 in TBX19 mutant organoids compared with wild type requires explanation, especially as the mutant protein would only be expected to be expressed in a small proportion of anterior pituitary lineage cells. If the developmental expression profile of key transcription factors in mutant organoids does not recapitulate that which occurs in vivo, any interpretation of the relevance of expression differences in the NFKB2 organoids to the mechanism(s) leading to corticotroph function in vivo has to be questionable. It is notable that the manipulation of iPSC cells used to generate mutants through CRISPR/Cas9 editing is not applied to the control iPSC line. It is possible that these manipulations lead to changes to the iPSC cells that are independent of the mutations introduced and this may change the phenotype of the cells. A better control would have been an iPSC line with a benign knock-in (such as GFP into the ROSA26 locus).

2. In the results section of the manuscript the authors acknowledge that hypothalamic tissue in the NFKB2 mutant organoid may be having an effect on the development of pituitary tissue. However, in the discussion the emphasis is entirely on pituitary autonomous mechanisms such as pituitary HESX1 expression or POMC gene regulation; in the conclusion of the abstract, a direct role for NFKB2 in pituitary differentiation is described. Whilst the data here may suggest a non-immune mediated alteration in pituitary function in DAVID syndrome, if this is due to alteration of the developing hypothalamus then this is not direct. A fuller discussion of the potential hypothalamic contribution and/or further characterisation of this aspect is warranted.

3. qRT-PCR data presented in Figure 6A shows negligible alteration of HESX1 expression at all time points in NFKB2 mutant organoids. This is not consistent with the 2-fold increase in HESX1 expression described in day 48 organoids found by bulk RNA sequencing. How do the authors reconcile these results and why is one result focused on in the discussion where a potential mechanism for a blockade of normal pituitary cell differentiation is suggested? Further confirmation of HESX1 expression is required.

4. Throughout the authors focus on POMC gene expression and ACTH antibody immunopositive as being indicative of corticotroph cell identity. In the human fetal pituitary melanotrophs are present and most ACTH antibodies are unable to distinguish these cells from corticotrophs. Is the antibody used specifically for ACTH rather than other products of the POMC gene? It is unlikely that all the ACTH-positive cells are melanotrophs, nevertheless, it is important to know what the proportions of the 2 POMC-positive cell types are. This could be distinguished by looking for the expression of NeuroD1, which would also define whether corticotrophs are committed but not fully differentiated in the NFKB2 mutant organoids. In support of an effect on corticotrophs, it is notable that CRHR1 expression (which would be expected to be restricted to this cell type) is reduced by 84% in bulk RNAseq data (Table 1) and this may be an indicator of the loss of corticotrophs in the model.

5. Notwithstanding the caveats about whether the organoid model recapitulates in vivo pituitary differentiation (see 1 above) and whether the bulk RNAseq accurately reflects expression levels (see 3 above), there are potentially some extremely interesting changes in gene expression shown in Table 1 which warrant further discussion. For example, there is a 25-fold reduction in POU1F1 expression which may be expected to reflect a loss of somatotrophs in the organoid (and possibly lactotrophs) and highlights the importance of characterising the effect of NFKB2 on other anterior pituitary cell types within the organoid. If somatotrophs are affected, this may be relevant to the organoids as a model of DAVID syndrome as GH deficiency has been described in some individuals with NFKB2 mutations. The huge increase in CGA expression may reflect a switch in cell fate to gonadotrophs, as has been described with a loss of TPIT in the mouse. These are examples of the changes that warrant further characterisation and discussion.

6. How do the authors explain the lack of effect of NFKB2 mutation on global NFKB signalling?

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> NFKB mutations are thought to be one of the causes of pituitary dysfunction, but until now they could not be reproduced in mice and their pathomechanism was unknown. The authors used the differentiation of hypothalamic-pituitary organoids from human pluripotent stem cells to recapitulate the disease in human iPS cells carrying the NFKB mutation.

Strengths:<br /> The authors achieved their primary goal of recapitulating the disease in human cells. In particular, the differentiation of the pituitary gland is closely linked to the adjacent hypothalamus in embryology, and the authors have again shown that this method is useful when the hypothalamus is suspected to be involved in pituitary abnormalities caused by genetic mutations.

Weaknesses:<br /> On the other hand, the pathomechanism is still not fully understood. This study provides some clues to the pathomechanism, but further analysis of NFKB expression and experiments investigating the relevant factors in more detail may help to clarify it further.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

In this work authors are trying to satisfy a real need in MR safety, when concerns can rise about the thermal increase due to metallic materials in patients carrying orthopedic implants. The "MR conditional" labeling of the implant obtained by ASTM in-vitro tests may help to plan the MR scan, but it is normally limited to a single specific MR sequence and a B0 value, and it is not always available. The adoption of an in-silico simulation testbed overcomes this limitation, providing a fast and reliable prediction of temperature increase from RF, in real-life scan conditions on human-like digital models. The FDA is pushing this approach.

Strengths:

The presented in-silico testbed looks valuable and validated. It is based on the widely available Visible Human Project (VHP) datasets, and the testbed is available on-line. The approval of the testbed by the FDA as a medical device development tool (MDDT) is a good premise for the large-scale adoption of this kind of solution.

Weaknesses:

A couple of limitations of the study are now clearly highlighted to the readers in this revised version of the paper. The following aspects:<br /> - the lack of the equivalent modeling for the gradients-related heating;<br /> - the way the implant is embedded in the VHP model that should take in consideration how to manage the removed and stretched tissues;<br /> are now correctly taken in consideration in the discussion, providing additional literature.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:

In this article, the authors provide a method of evaluating safety of orthopedic implants in relation to Radiofrequency induced heating issues. The authors provide an open source computational heterogeneous human model and explain computational techniques in a finite element method solver to predict the RF induced temperature increase due to an orthopedic implant while being exposed to MRI RF fields at 1.5 T.

Strengths:

The open access computational human model along with their semiautomatic algorithm to position the implant can help realistically model the implant RF exposure in patient avoiding over- or under-estimation of RF heating measured using rectangular box phantoms such as ASTM phantom. Additionally, using numerical simulation to predict radiofrequency induced heating will be much easier compared to the experimental measurements in MRI scanner, especially when the scanner availability is limited.

Weaknesses:

The proposed method only used radiofrequency (RF) field exposure to evaluate the heating around the implant. However, in the case of bulky implants the rapidly changing gradient field can also produce significant heating due to large eddy currents. So the gradient induced heating still remains an issue to be evaluated to decide on the safety of the patient. Moreover, the method is limited to a single human model and might not be representative of patients with different age, sex and body weights.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript by Hann et. al examines the role of survival motor neuron protein (SMN) in lateral plate mesoderm-derived cells using the Prrx1Cre to elucidate how changing cell-specific SMN levels coordinate aspects of the spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) pathology. SMN has generally been studied in neuronal cells, and this is one of the first insights into non-neuronal cells that may contribute to SMA disease. The authors generated 3 mouse lines: a Prrx1;Smnf/f conditional null mouse, as well as, single and double copy Prrx1;Smnf/f;SMN2 mice carrying either one or two copies of a human SMN2 transgene. First, the bone development and growth of all three were assessed; the conditional null Smn mutation was lethal shortly after birth, while the SMN2 2-copy mutant did not exhibit bone growth phenotypes. Meanwhile, single-copy SMN2 mutant mice showed reduced size and shorter limbs with shorter proliferative and hypertrophic chondrocyte zones. The authors suggested that this was cell autonomous by assessing the expression of extrinsic factors known to modulate proliferation/differentiation of growth plate chondrocytes. After assessing bone phenotypes, the authors transitioned to the assessments of neuromuscular junction (NMJ) phenotypes, since there are documented neuromuscular impairments in SMA and the Prrx1Cre transgene is expressed in muscle-associated fibro-adipogenic progenitors (FAPs). Neonatal NMJ development was unchanged in mutant mice with two copies of SMN2 , but adult single-copy SMN2 mutant mice had abnormal NMJ morphology, altered presynaptic neurotransmission, and problematic nerve terminal structure. Finally, the authors sought to assess the ability to rescue NMJ phenotypes via FAP cell transplantation and showed wild-type FAPs were able to reduce pre/postsynaptic fragmentation and neurofilament varicosities.

Strengths:<br /> The conditional genetic approaches are novel and interestingly demonstrate the potential for chondrocyte and fibro-adipogenic progenitor-specific contributions to the SMA pathology.

The characterizations of the neuromuscular and NMJ phenotypes are relatively strong.

The data strongly suggest a non-neuronal contribution to SMA, which indicates a need for further mechanistic (cellular and molecular) studies to better understand SMA.

Weaknesses:<br /> The skeletal analyses are not rigorous and likely do not get to the core of how SMN regulates bone development.

The overall work is descriptive and lacks convincing mechanisms.

Additional experimentation is likely needed to fully justify the conclusions.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Sang-Hyeon et al. laid out a compelling rationale to explore the role of the SMN protein in mesenchymal cells, to determine whether SMN deficiency there could be a pathologic mechanism of SMA. They crossed Smnf7/f7 mice with Prrx1Cre mice to produce SmnΔMPC mice where exon 7 was specifically deleted and thus SMN protein was eliminated in limb mesenchymal progenitor cells (MPCs). To demonstrate gene dosage-dependence of phenotypes, SmnΔMPC mice were crossed with transgenic mice expressing human SMN2 to produce SmnΔMPC mice with different copies of SMN2 (0, 1, or 2). The paper provides genetic evidence that SMN in mesenchymal cells regulates the development of bones and neuromuscular junctions. Genetic data were convincing and revealed novel functions of SMN.

Strengths:<br /> Overall, the paper provided genetic evidence that SMN deficiency in mesenchymal cells caused abnormalities in bones and NMJs, revealing novel functions of SMN and leading to future experiments. As far as genetics is concerned, the data were convincing (except for the rescue experiment, see below); the conclusions are important.

Weaknesses:<br /> The paper seemed to be descriptive in nature and could be improved with more experiments to investigate underlying mechanisms. In addition, some data appeared to be contradicting or difficult to explain. The rescue data were not convincing.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> SMN expression in non-neuronal cells, particularly in limb mesenchymal progenitors is essential for the proper growth of chondrocytes and the formation of adult NMJ junctions.

Strengths:<br /> The authors show copy numbers of smndelta7 in MPC influence NMJ structure.

Weaknesses:<br /> Functional recovery by FAP transplantation is not complete. Mesenchymal progenitors are heterogeneous, and how heterogeneity influences this study is not clear. Part of the main findings to show the importance of SMN expression in non-neuronal cells is partly published by the same group (Kim et al., JCI Insight 2022). In the study, the authors used Dpp4(+) cells. The difference between the current study and the previous study is not so clear.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In 2019, Wilkinson and colleagues (PMID: 31142833) managed to break the veil in a 20-year open question on how to properly culture and expand Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs). Although this study is revolutionizing the HSC biology field, several questions regarding the mechanisms of expansion remain open. Leveraging on this gap, Zhang et al.; embarked on a much-needed investigation regarding HSC self-renewal in this particular culturing setting.

The authors firstly tacked the known caveat that some HSC membrane markers are altered during in vitro cultures by functionally establishing EPCR (CD201) as a reliable and stable HSC marker (Figure 1), demonstrating that this compartment is also responsible for long-term hematopoietic reconstitution (Figure 3). Next in Figure 2, the authors performed single-cell omics to shed light on the potential mechanisms involved in HSC maintenance, and interestingly it was shown that several hematopoietic populations like monocytes and neutrophils are also present in this culture conditions, which has not been reported. The study goes on to functionally characterize these cultured HSCs (cHSC). The authors elegantly demonstrate using state-of-the-art barcoding strategies that these culturing conditions provoke heterogeneity in the expanding HSC pool (Figure 4). In the last experiment (Figure 5), it was demonstrated that cHSC not only retain their high EPCR expression levels but upon transplantation, these cells remain more quiescent than freshly-isolated controls.

Taken together, this study independently validates that the proposed culturing system works and provides new insights into the mechanisms whereby HSC expansion takes place.

Most of the conclusions of this study are well supported by the present manuscript, some aspects regarding experimental design and especially the data analysis should be clarified and possibly extended.

1. The first major point regards the single-cell (sc) omics performed on whole cultured cells (Figure 2):<br /> a. The authors claim that both RNA and ATAC were performed and indeed some ATAC-seq data is shown in Figure 2B, but this collected data seems to be highly underused.<br /> b. It's not entirely clear to this reviewer the nature of the so-called "HSC signatures"(SF2C) and why exactly these genes were selected. There are genes such as Mpl and Angpt1 which are used for Mk-biased HSCs. Maybe relying on other HSC molecular signatures (PMID: 12228721, for example) would not only bring this study more into the current field context but would also have a more favorable analysis outcome. Moreover reclustering based on a different signature can also clarify the emergence of relevant HSC clusters.<br /> c. The authors took the hard road to perform experiments with the elegant HSC-specific Fgd5-reporter, and they claim in lines 170-171 that it "failed to clearly demarcate in our single-cell multimodal data". This seems like a rather vague statement and leads to the idea that the scRNA-seq experiment is not reliable. It would be interesting to show a UMAP with this gene expression regardless and also potentially some other HSC markers.

2. During the discussion and in Figure 4, the authors ponder and demonstrate that this culturing system can provoke divert HSC close expansion, having also functional consequences. This a known caveat from the original system, but in more recent publications from the original group (PMID: 36809781 and PMID: 37385251) small alterations into the protocol seem to alleviate clone selection. It's intriguing why the authors have not included these parameters at least in some experiments to show reproducibility or why these studies are not mentioned during the discussion section.

3. In this reviewer's opinion, the finding that transplanted cHSC are more quiescent than freshly isolated controls is the most remarkable aspect of this manuscript. There is a point of concern and an intriguing thought that sprouts from this experiment. It is empirical that for this experiment the same HSC dose is transplanted between both groups. This however is technically difficult since the membrane markers from both groups are different. Although after 8 weeks chimerism levels seem to be the same (SF5D) for both groups, it would strengthen the evidence if the author could demonstrate that the same number of HSCs were transplanted in both groups, likely by limiting dose experiments. Finally, it's interesting that even though EE100 cells underwent multiple replication rounds (adding to their replicative aging), these cells remained more quiescent once they were in an in vivo setting. Since the last author of this manuscript has also expertise in HSC aging, it would be interesting to explore whether these cells have "aged" during the expansion process by assessing whether they display an aged phenotype (myeloid-skewed output in serial transplantations and/or assisting their transcriptional age).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, Zhang and colleagues characterise the behaviour of mouse hematopoietic stem cells when cultured in PVA conditions, a recently published method for HSC expansion (Wilkinson et al., Nature, 2019), using multiome analysis (scRNA-seq and scATACseq in the same single cell) and extensive transplantation experiments. The latter are performed in several settings including barcoding and avoiding recipient conditioning. Collectively the authors identify several interesting properties of these cultures namely: 1) only very few cells within these cultures have long-term repopulation capacity, many others, however, have progenitor properties that can rescue mice from lethal myeloablation; 2) single-cell characterisation by combined scRNAseq and scATACseq is not sufficient to identify cells with repopulation capacity; 3) expanded HSCs can be engrafted in unconditioned host and return to quiescence.<br /> The authors also confirm previous studies that EPCRhigh HSCs have better reconstitution capability than EPCRlow HSCs when transplanted.

Strengths:<br /> The major strength of this manuscript is that it describes how functional HSCs are expanded in PVA cultures to a deeper extent than what has been done in the original publication. The authors are also mindful of considering the complexities of interpreting transplantation data. As these PVA cultures become more widely used by the HSC community, this manuscript is valuable as it provides a better understanding of the model and its limitations.

Novelty aspects include:<br /> • The authors determined that small numbers of expanded HSCs enable transplantation into non-conditioned syngeneic recipients.<br /> • This is to my knowledge the first report characterising the output of PVA cultures by multiome. This could be a very useful resource for the field.<br /> • They are also the first to my knowledge to use barcoding to quantify HSC repopulation capacity at the clonal level after PVA culture.<br /> • It is also useful to report that HSCs isolated from fetal livers do expand less than their adult counterparts in these PVA cultures.

Weaknesses:<br /> • The analysis of the multiome experiment is limited. The authors do not discuss what cell types, other than functional or phenotypic HSCs are present in these cultures (are they mostly progenitors or bona fide mature cells?) and no quantifications are provided.<br /> • Barcoding experiments are technically elegant but do not bring particularly novel insights.<br /> • The number of mice analysed in certain experiments is fairly low (Figures 1 and 5).<br /> • The manuscript remains largely descriptive. While the data can be used to make useful recommendations to future users working with PVA cultures and in general with HSCs, those recommendations could be more clearly spelled out in the discussion.<br /> • The authors should also provide a discussion of the other publications that have used these methods to date.

Overall, the authors succeeded in providing a useful set of experiments to better interpret what type of HSCs are expanded in PVA cultures. More in-depth mining of their bioinformatic data (by the authors or other groups) is likely to highlight other interesting/relevant aspects of HSC biology in relation to this expansion methodology.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

HIV-associated nephropathy (HIVAN) is a rapidly progressing form of kidney disease that manifests secondary to untreated HIV infection, and is predominantly seen in individuals of African descent. Tg26 mice carrying an HIV transgene lacking gag and pol exhibit high levels of albuminuria and rapid decline in renal function that recapitulates many features of HIVAN in humans. HIVAN is seen predominantly in individuals carrying two copies of missense variants in the APOL1 gene, and the authors have previously shown that APOL1 risk variant mRNA induces activity of the double-strand RNA sensor kinase PKR. Because of the tight association between the APOL1 risk genotype and HIVAN, the authors hypothesized that PKR activation may mediate renal injury in Tg26 mice, and tested this hypothesis by treating mice with a commonly used PKR inhibitory compound called C16. Treatment with C16 substantially attenuated renal damage in the Tg26 model as measured by urinary albumin/creatinine ratio, urinary NGAL/creatinine ratio, and improvement in histology. The authors then performed bulk and single-nucleus RNAseq on kidneys from mice from different treatment groups to identify pathways and patterns of cell injury associated with HIV transgene expression as well as to determine the mechanistic basis for the effect of C16 treatment. They show that proximal tubule nuclei from Tg26 mice appear to have more mitochondrial transcripts which was reversed by C16 treatment and suggest that this may provide evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction in this model. They explore this hypothesis by showing there is a decrease in the expression of nuclear-encoded genes and proteins involved in oxidative phosphorylation as well as a decrease in respiratory capacity via functional assessment of respiration in tubule and glomerular preparations from these mouse kidneys. All of these changes were reversed by C16 treatment. The authors propose the existence of a novel injured proximal tubule cell-type characterized by the leak of mitochondrial transcripts into the nucleus (PT-Mito). Analysis of HIV transgene expression showed high level expression in podocytes, consistent with the pronounced albuminuria that characterizes this model and HIVAN, but transcripts were also detected in tubular and endothelial cells. Because of the absence of mitochondrial transcripts in the podocytes, the authors speculate that glomerular mitochondrial dysfunction in this model is driven by damage to glomerular endothelial cells.

Strengths:

The strengths of this study include the comprehensive transcriptional analysis of the Tg26 model, including an evaluation of HIV transgene expression, which has not been previously reported. This data highlights that HIV transcripts are expressed in a subset of podocytes, consistent with the highly proteinuric disease seen in mice and humans. However, transcripts were also seen in other tubular cells, notably intercalated cells, principal cells and injured proximal tubule cells. Though the podocyte expression makes sense, the relevance of the tubular expression to human disease is still an open question.

The data in support of mitochondrial dysfunction are also robust and rely on combined evidence from downregulation of transcripts involved in oxidative phosphorylation, decreases in complex I and II as determined by immunoblot, and assessments of respiratory capacity in tubular and glomerular preparations. These data are largely consistent with other preclinical renal injury models reported in the literature as well as previous, less thorough assessments in the Tg26 model.

Weaknesses:

The key weakness of the study lies in the use of a PKR inhibitor with questionable specificity. C16 has been reported to inhibit numerous other kinases including cyclin CDKs and GSK3α and -β, and this means that the conclusions of this study with respect to the role of PKR are highly questionable. The rationale for the dose used was not provided (and is lower than used in other publications with C16), and in the absence of drug exposure data and assessment of target engagement, it is difficult to ascertain whether substantial inhibition of PKR was achieved.

A second key weakness lies in the identification of the PT-Mito cell cluster. Though the authors provide some rationale for the identification of this specific cell type, it seems equally plausible the cells merely reflect a high background capture of mitochondria in a subset of droplets. The IHC analysis that was provided is not convincing enough to support the claim and more careful high resolution imaging and in situ hybridization (with appropriate quantitation) will be needed to provide substantive support for the presence of a proximal tubule cell type with mitochondrial transcript that are trafficked to the nucleus.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Numerous studies by the authors and other groups have demonstrated an important role for HIV gene expression kidney cells in promoting progressive chronic kidney disease, especially HIV-associated nephropathy. The authors had previously demonstrated a role for protein kinase R (PKR) in a non-HIV transgenic model of kidney disease (Okamoto, Commun Bio, 2021). In this study, the authors used innovative techniques including bulk and single nuclear RNAseq to demonstrate that mice expressing a replication-incompetent HIV transgene have prominent dysregulation of mitochondrial gene expression and activation of PKR and that treatment of these mice with a small molecule PKR inhibitor ameliorated the kidney disease phenotype in HIV-transgenic mice. They also identified STAT3 as a key upstream regulator of kidney injury in this model, which is consistent with previously published studies. Other important advances include identifying the kidney cell types that express the HIV transgene and have dysregulation of cellular pathways.

Strengths:<br /> Major strengths of the study include the use of a wide variety of state-of-the-art molecular techniques to generate important new data on the pathogenesis of kidney injury in this commonly used model of kidney disease and the identification of PKR as a potential druggable target for the treatment of HIV-induced kidney disease. The authors also identify a potential novel cell type within the kidney characterized by high expression of mitochondrial genes.

Weaknesses:<br /> Though the HIV-transgenic model used in these studies results in a phenotype that is very similar to HIV-associated nephropathy in humans, the model has several limitations that may prevent direct translation to human disease, including the fact that mice lack several genetic factors that are important contributors to HIV and kidney pathogenesis in humans. Additional studies are therefore needed to confirm these findings in human kidney disease.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this manuscript, Huang et al have investigated the exercise mimetic role of Eugenol (a natural product) in skeletal muscle and whole-body fitness. The authors report that Eugenol facilitates skeletal muscle remodeling to a slower/oxidative phenotype typically associated with endurance. Eugenol also remodels the fat driving browning the WAT. In both skeletal muscle and fat Eugenol promotes oxidative capacity and mitochondrial biogenesis markers. Eugenol also improves exercise tolerance in a swimming test. Through a series of in vitro studies the authors demonstrate that eugenol may function through the trpv1 channel, Ca mobilization, and activation of CaN/NFAT signaling in the skeletal muscle to regulate slow-twitch phenotype. In addition, Eugenol also induces several myokines but mainly IL-15 through which it may exert its exercise mimetic effects. Overall, the manuscript is well-written, but there are several mechanistic gaps, physiological characterization is limited, and some data are mostly co-relative without vigorous testing (e.g. link between Eugenol, IL15 induction, and endurance). Specific major concerns are listed below.

Strengths:<br /> A natural product activator of the TRPV1 channel that could elicit exercise-like effects through skeletal muscle remodeling. Potential for discovering other mechanisms of action of Eugenol.

Weaknesses:<br /> (1) Figure 1: Histomorphological analysis using immunostaining for type I, IIA, IIX, and IIB should be performed and quantified across different muscle groups and also in the soleus. Fiber type switch measured based on qPCR and Westerns does not sufficiently indicate the extent of fiber type switch. Better images for Fig. 1c should be provided.

(2) Figure 2: Histomorphological analysis for SDH and NADH-TR should be performed and quantified in different muscle groups. Seahorse or oroborous respirometry experiments should be performed to determine the actually increase in mitochondrial respiratory capacity either in isolated mitochondria or single fibers from vehicle and Eugenol-treated mice. Em for mitochondrial should be added to determine the extent of mitochondrial remodeling. The current data is insufficient to indicate the extent of mitochondrial or oxidative remodeling.

(3) Figure 2: Gene expression analysis is limited to a few transcriptional factors. A thorough analysis of gene expression through RNA-seq should be performed to get an unbiased effect of Eugenol on muscle transcriptome. This is especially important because eugenol is proposed to work through CaN/NFAT signaling, major transcriptional regulators of muscle phenotype.

(4) I suggest the inclusion of additional exercise or performance testing including treadmill running, wheel running, and tensiometry. Quantification with a swimming test and measurement of the exact intensity of exercise, etc. is limited.

(5) In addition to muscle performance, whole-body metabolic/energy homeostatic effects should also be measured to determine a potential increase in aerobic metabolism over anaerobic metabolism.

(6) For the swimming test and other measurements, only 4 weeks of vehicle vs. Eugenol treatment was used. For this type of pharmacological study, a time course should be performed to determine the saturation point of the effect. Does exercise tolerance progressively increase with time?

(7) The authors should also consider measuring adaptation to exercise training with or without Eugenol.

(8) Histomorphological analysis of Wat is also lacking. EchoMRI would give a better picture of lean and fat mass.

(9) The experiments performed to demonstrate that Eugenol functions through trpv1 are mostly correlational. Some experiments are needed with trpv1 KO or KD instead of inhibitor. Similarly, KD for other trpv channels should be tested (at least 1-4 that seem to be expressed in the muscle). Triple KO or trpv null cells should be considered to demonstrate that eugenol does not have another biological target.

(10) Eugenol + trpv1 inhibition studies are performed in c2c12 cells and only looks at myofiber genes expression. This is incomplete. Some studies in mitochondrial and oxsphos genes should be done.

(11) The experiments linking Eugenol to ca handling, and calcineurin/nfat activation are all performed in c2c12 cells. There seems to be a link between Eugenol activation and CaN/NFAT activation and fiber type regulation in cells, however, this needs to be tested in mouse studies at the functional level using some of the parameters measured in aims 1 and 2.

(12) The myokine studies are incomplete. The authors show a link between Eugenol treatment and myokines/IL-15 induction. However, this is purely co-relational, without any experiments performed to show whether IL-15 mediates any of the effects of eugenol in mice.

(13) An additional major concern is that it cannot be ruled out that Engenol is uniquely mediating its effects through trpv1. Ideally, muscle-specific trpv1 mice should be used to perform some experiments with Eugenol to confirm that this ion channel is involved in the physiological effects of eugenol.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors examined the hypothesis that eugenol enhances the metabolic profiles of skeletal muscles by activating the TRPV1-Ca2+-calcineurin-NFATc1-IL-15 signalling pathway. They first show that eugenol promotes skeletal muscle transformation and metabolic functions in mitochondria and adipose tissues by analysing changes in the expression of mRNA and proteins of relevant representative protein markers. With similar methodologies, they further found that eugenol increases the expression of mRNA and/or proteins of TRPV1, CaN, NFATC1, and IL-15. These processes were, however, prevented by inhibiting TRPV1 and CaN. Similar expression changes were also triggered by increasing intracellular Ca2+ with A23187, suggesting a Ca2+-dependent process.

Strengths:<br /> Different protein markers were used as a readout of the functions of skeletal muscles, mitochondria, and adipose tissues and analysed at both mRNA and protein levels. The results are mostly consistent though it is not always the case. Although the signaling pathway of TRPV1-Ca2+-CaN-NFAT is not new and well documented, they identified IL-15 as a new downstream target of this pathway,

Weaknesses:<br /> Apart from Fig.2A and 2B, they mostly utilised protein expression changes as an index of tissue functional changes. Most of the data supporting the conclusions are thus rather indirect. More direct functional evidence would be more compelling. For example, a lipolysis assay could be used to measure the metabolic function of adipocytes after eugenol treatment in Fig.3. Functional activation of NFAT can be demonstrated by examining the nuclear translocation of NFAT.

To further demonstrate the role of TRPV1 channels in the effects of eugenol, TRPV1-deficient mice and tissues could also be used. Will the improved swimming test in Fig. 2B and increased CaN, NFAT, and IL-15 triggered by eugenol be all prevented in TRPV1-lacking mice and tissues?

Direct evidence of eugenol activation of TRPV1 channels in skeletal muscles is also lacking. The flow cytometry assay was used to measure Ca2+ changes in the C2C12 cell line in Fig. 5A. But this assay is rather indirect. It would be more convincing to monitor real-time activation of TRPV1 channels in skeletal muscles not in cell lines using Ca2+ imaging or electrophysiology.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Zhang et al. described a warm autopsy case of a metastatic prostate cancer patient and the follow-up genomic and epigenomic analysis. The authors provided a thorough description of the warm autopsy procedure including consent process, patient evaluation, layout of operation room, specialties required to conduct a warm autopsy, and many other details. Following autopsy, they conducted a series of genomics and epigenomics experiments on selected primary tumors and metastasized tumors from different body sites. Genomic data analysis revealed several interesting results. For example, they discovered a putative metastasis driver event, CDKN1B truncation, and they provided functional relevance of this gene using cell cultures. They were able to piece together the evolutionary history and subclonal structures of the tumors in this patient, which also revealed extensive heterogeneity. They showed a strong correlation between the genetic and epigenetic distances across the tumors.

Strengths:<br /> Overall this is a very well-designed and nicely conducted study. According to the authors, warm autopsy procedures and systems are not yet well established in China. Therefore, this study represents the first warm autopsy in China, and will likely have a strong impact on similar future studies in China. The authors did a good job describing the rationale of a warm autopsy and provided a clear guideline. The genomics analyses were somewhat standard but provided interesting insights.

Weaknesses:<br /> There are several limitations that can be improved upon.

First, while this reviewer does not require the authors to increase the sample size, the authors should provide some discussion, especially on the limitation of generalizing their findings to other patients/cases/cancer types.

Second, the DNA methylation data was used to estimate clonal evolution, but the authors did not investigate whether there is any driver epigenetic events in metastasis. It seems that the authors did not generate WGBS on the primary tumors, which is another limitation.

Third, the authors generated RNA-seq data across many samples but did not provide any analysis beyond the expression level of CDKN1B. This seems to be a missed opportunity.

Fourth, the clonal relationship between the three primary tumors (PB1, PB2, and PB3) and the metastasized tumors is not very well described. Do the authors believe that the metastasis came from a subclone ancestral to the three primary tumors?

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors conducted the first warm autopsy of prostate cancer in China with clear and repeatable standard workflow, documented the transcriptional/genomic/epigenetic profiles across primary tumors and metastases, and highlighted CDKN1B mutation as a key driver mutation for prostate cancer metastases. They provided sufficient details and convincing evidence of multi-omics in their study to define a potential clonal evolution map for the metastatic progression of prostate cancer. The study will also stimulate the development of warm autopsy programs beneficial to patients in Asian populations.

Strengths:<br /> Although the overall incidence of prostate cancer is lower in Asian men compared to men in Western countries, the incidence is increasing in China recently. Therefore the autopsy program will have an important significance in boosting the understanding of molecular mechanism and drug development in prostate cancer for Asian population.<br /> 1. Clear illustration on the warm autopsy workflow and detailed documentation of patient clinical course, sample sites, and downstream analyses. This established a great standard for future expansion of similar autopsy programs and may help boost the consent of more cases.<br /> 2. Systematic and in-depth multi-omic analyses based on limited samples resulted in an impressive atlas for the intratumoral heterogeneity and clonal evolution across primary tumors and metastases. Key driver mutations were thus highlighted.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. Although the authors highlighted TP53, CDK12, and CDKN1B mutations in the results, not much new knowledge on mechanisms is added to the field since these are already documented in previous studies. Both the unique/private and representative patterns in the single patient, compared to the publicly documented Chinese populations and other ethnical populations will add more significance to this study.

2. The authors claimed that CDKN1B mutation may be the driver event for prostate cancer metastases, but the mutation was absent in the initial bone metastases according to the evolution map created. Although the authors acknowledged this gap and mentioned an FUS mutation in the bone metastases, this compromised the strength in demonstrating the driving significance of this gene mutation. The shRNA experiments on migration<br /> and invasion were impressive but did not necessarily support the initiating potential of CDKN1B mutation in metastases to bone, which is the predominant site of metastases in prostate cancer. It might be a passenger mutation enriched in soft organ metastases or a driver mutation for the secondary metastases from bone metastases.

3. The epigenetic regulation highlighted in the study was not closely correlated to the genetic pattern highlighted (CDK12, CDKN1B, etc.).

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Heitmann et al introduce a novel method for predicting the potential of drug candidates to cause Torsades de Pointes using simulations. Despite the fact that a multitude of such methods have been proposed in the past decade, this approach manages to provide novelty in a way that is potentially paradigm-shifting. The figures are beautiful and manage to convey difficult concepts intuitively.

Strengths:<br /> (1) Novel combination of detailed mechanistic simulations with rigorous statistical modeling

(2) A method for predicting drug safety that can be used during drug development

(3) A clear explication of difficult concepts.

Weaknesses:<br /> (1) In this reviewer's opinion, the most important scientific issue that can be addressed is the fact that when a drug blocks multiple channels, it is not only the IC50 but also the Hill coefficient that can differ. By the same token, two drugs that block the same channel may have identical IC50s but different Hill coefficients. This is important to consider since concentration-dependence is an important part of the results presented here. If the Hill coefficients were to be significantly different, the concentration-dependent curves shown in Figure 6 could look very different.

(2) The curved lines shown in Figure 6 can initially be difficult to comprehend, especially when all the previous presentations emphasized linearity. But a further issue is obscured in these plots, which is the fact that they show a two-dimensional projection of a 4-dimensional space. Some of the drugs might hit the channels that are not shown (INaL & IKs), whereas others will not. It is unclear, and unaddressed in the manuscript, how differences in the "hidden channels" will influence the shapes of these curves. An example, or at least some verbal description, could be very helpful.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In the paper from Hartman, Vandenberg, and Hill entitled "assessing drug safety, by identifying the access of arrhythmia and cardio, myocytes, electro physiology", the authors, define a new metric, the axis of arrhythmia" that essentially describes the parameter space of ion channel conductance combinations, where early after depolarization can be observed.

Strengths:<br /> There is an elegance to the way the authors have communicated the scoring system. The method is potentially useful because of its simplicity, accessibility, and ease of use. I do think it adds to the field for this reason - a number of existing methods are overly complex and unwieldy and not necessarily better than the simple parameter regime scan presented here.

Weaknesses:<br /> The method described in the manuscript suffers from a number of weaknesses that plague current screening methods. Included in these are the data quality and selection used to inform the drug-blocking profile. It's well known that drug measurements vary widely, depending on the measurement conditions.

There doesn't seem to be any consideration of pacing frequency, which is an important consideration for arrhythmia triggers, resulting from repolarization abnormalities, but also depolarization abnormalities. Extremely high doses of drugs are used to assess the population risk. But does the method yield important information when realistic drug concentrations are used? In the discussion, the comparison to conventional approaches suggests that the presented method isn't necessarily better than conventional methods.

In conclusion, I have struggled to grasp the exceptional novelty of the new metric as presented, especially when considering that the badly needed future state must include a component of precision medicine.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, the authors set out to determine whether colorectal cancer surgery site (right, left, rectal) and chemotherapy impact the subsequent risk of developing T2DM in the Danish national health register.

Strengths:<br /> - The research question is conceptually interesting<br /> - The Danish national health register is a comprehensive health database<br /> - The data analysis was thorough and appropriate<br /> -The findings are interesting, and a little surprising that there was no impact of chemotherapy on the development of T2DM

Weaknesses:<br /> - This is not a weakness as such, but in the discussion, I would consider adding some brief comment on the international generalizability of the findings - e.g. demographic make up of the Danish population health register and background rates of DM and obesity in this population with CRC compared to countries on other continents.<br /> - A little more information would be helpful regarding how T2DM was diagnosed in the registry. If someone did develop transient hyperglycemia requiring DM medications during chemotherapy, would the investigators have been able to identify these people? Would they have been classified as T2DM based on filling a prescription for DM meds for a period of time? Also, did the authors have information regarding time to development of T2DM after surgery?<br /> - In the adjusted Models, the authors did not adjust for cancer stage, even though cancer stage appears to be very different between the chemo and no chemo groups. It would be interesting to know if it affects the results if the model adjusted for cancer stage<br /> - It would be worthwhile to report if mortality rates were different between the groups during follow up, and if the authors investigated whether perhaps differences in mortality rates led to specific groups living longer, and therefore having more time to develop DM

Overall, the authors achieved their aims, and the conclusions are supported by their results as reported.<br /> The results are unlikely to significantly change patient treatment or T2DM screening in this population. With some additional information, as described above, the results would be of interest to the community.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary: The study showed the impact of cancer treatment on new onset of diabetes among patients with colorectal cancer using the national database. Findings reported that individuals with rectal cancer without chemotherapy were less likely to develop diabetes but among other groups, treatment didn't show any impact on the development of diabetes. BMI still played a significant role in developing diabetes regardless of treatment types.

Strengths:<br /> One of the strengths of this study is innovative findings about the prognosis of colorectal cancer treatment stratified by treatment types. Especially, as it examined the impact of treatment on the risk of new chronic disease after diagnosis, it became significant evidence that suggests practical insights in developing a proper monitoring system for patients with colorectal cancer and their outcomes after treatment and diagnosis. It is imperative for providers to guide patients and caregivers to prevent adverse outcomes like new onset of chronic disease based on BMI and types of treatment. The next strength is the national database. As the study used the national database, the generalizability is validated.

Weaknesses: Even though the study attempted to examine the impact of each treatment option, the dosage of chemotherapy and the types of chemotherapy were not able to be examined due to the data source.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Trypanosoma brucei undergoes antigenic variation to evade the mammalian host's immune response. To achieve this, T. brucei regularly expresses different VSGs as its major surface antigen. VSG expression sites are exclusively subtelomeric, and VSG transcription by RNA polymerase I is strictly monoallelic. It has been shown that T. brucei RAP1, a telomeric protein, and the phosphoinositol pathway are essential for VSG monoallelic expression. In previous studies, Cestari et al. (ref. 24) has shown that PIP5pase interacts with RAP1 and that RAP1 binds PI(3,4,5)P3. RNAseq and ChIPseq analyses have been performed previously in PIP5pase conditional knockout cells, too (ref. 24). In the current study, Touray et al. did similar analyses except that catalytic dead PIP5pase mutant was used and the DNA and PI(3,4,5)P3 binding activities of RAP1 fragments were examined. Specifically, the authors examined the transcriptome profile and did RAP1 ChIPseq in PIP5pase catalytic dead mutant. The authors also expressed several C-terminal His6-tagged RAP1 recombinant proteins (full-length, aa1-300, aa301-560, and aa 561-855). These fragments' DNA binding activities were examined by EMSA analysis and their phosphoinositides binding activities were examined by affinity pulldown of biotin-conjugated phosphoinositides. As a result, the authors confirmed that VSG silencing (both BES-linked and MES-linked VSGs) depends on PIP5pase catalytic activity, but the overall knowledge improvement is incremental. The most convincing data come from the phosphoinositide binding assay as it clearly shows that N-terminus of RAP1 binds PI(3,4,5)P3 but not PI(4,5)P2, although this is only assayed in vitro, while the in vivo binding of full-length RAP1 to PI(3,4,5)P3 has been previously published by Cestari et al (ref. 24) already. Considering that many phosphoinositides exert their regulatory role by modulating the subcellular localization of their bound proteins, it is reasonable to hypothesize that binding to PI(3,4,5)P3 can remove RAP1 from the chromatin.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, Touray et al investigate the mechanisms by which PIP5Pase and RAP1 control VSG expression in T. brucei and demonstrate an important role for this enzyme in a signalling pathway that likely plays a role in antigenic variation in T. brucei. While these data do not definitively show a role for this pathway in antigenic variation, the data are critical for establishing this pathway as a potential way the parasite could control antigenic variation and thus represent a fundamental discovery.

The methods used in the study are generally well-controlled. The authors provide evidence that RAP1 binds to PI(3,4,5)P3 through its N-terminus and that this binding regulates RAP1 binding to VSG expression sites, which in turn regulates VSG silencing. Overall their results support the conclusions made in the manuscript. Readers should take into consideration that the epitope tags on RAP1 could alter its function, however.

There are a few small caveats that are worth noting. First, the analysis of VSG derepression and switching in Figure 1 relies on a genome which does not contain minichromosomal (MC) VSG sequences. This means that MC VSGs could theoretically be mis-assigned as coming from another genomic location in the absence of an MC reference. As the origin of the VSGs in these clones isn't a major point in the paper, I do not think this is a major concern, but I would not over-interpret the particular details of switching outcomes in these experiments.

Another aspect of this work that is perhaps important, but not discussed much by the authors, is the fact that signalling is extremely poorly understood in T. brucei. In Figure 1B, the RNA-seq data show many genes upregulated after expression of the Mut PIP5Pase (not just VSGs). The authors rightly avoid claiming that this pathway is exclusive to VSGs, but I wonder if these data could provide insight into the other biological processes that might be controlled by this signaling pathway in T. brucei.

Overall, this is an excellent study which represents an important step forward in understanding how antigenic variation is controlled in T. brucei. The possibility that this process could be controlled via a signalling pathway has been speculated for a long time, and this study provides the first mechanistic evidence for that possibility.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

What are the overarching principles by which prokaryotic genomes evolve? This fundamental question motivates the investigations in this excellent piece of work. While it is still very common in this field to simply assume that prokaryotic genome evolution can be described by a standard model from mathematical population genetics, and fit the genomic data to such a model, a smaller group of researchers rightly insists that we should not have such preconceived ideas and instead try to carefully look at what the genomic data tell us about how prokaryotic genomes evolve. This is the approach taken by the authors of this work. Lacking a tight theoretical framework, the challenge of such approaches is to devise analysis methods that are robust to all our uncertainties about what the underlying evolutionary dynamics might be.

The authors here focus on a collection of ~300 single-cell genomes from a relatively well-isolated habitat with relatively simple species composition, i.e. cyanobacteria living in hotsprings in Yellowstone National Park, and convincingly demonstrate that the relative simplicity of this habitat increases our ability to interpret what the genomic data tells us about the evolutionary dynamics.

Using a very thorough and multi-faceted analysis of these data, the authors convincingly show that there are three main species of Synechococcus cyanobacteria living in this habitat, and that apart from very frequent recombination within each species (which is in line with insights from other recent studies) there is also a remarkably frequent occurrence of hybridization events between the different species, and with as of yet unidentified other genomes. Moreover, these hybridization events drive much of the diversity within each species. The authors also show convincing evidence that these hybridization events are not neutral but are driven by selected by natural selection.

Strengths:

The great strength of this paper is that, by not making any preconceived assumptions about what the evolutionary dynamics is expected to look like, but instead devising careful analysis methods to tease apart what the data tells us about what has happened in the evolution in these genomes, highly novel and unexpected results are obtained, i.e. the major role of hybridization across the 3 main species living in this habitat.

The analysis is very thorough and reading the detailed supplementary material it is clear that these authors took a lot of care in devising these methods and avoiding the pitfalls that unfortunately affect many other studies in this research area.

The picture of the evolutionary dynamics of these three Synechococcus species that emerge from this analysis is highly novel and surprising. I think this study is a major stepping stone toward the development of more realistic quantitative theories of genome evolution in prokaryotes.

The analysis methods that the authors employ are also partially novel and will no doubt be very valuable for analysis of many other datasets.

Weaknesses:

I feel the main weakness of this paper is that the presentation is structured such that it is extremely difficult to read. I feel readers have essentially no chance to understand the main text without first fully reading the 50-page supplement with methods and 31 supplementary materials. I think this will unfortunately strongly narrow the audience for this paper and below in the recommendations for the authors I make some suggestions as to how this might be improved.

A very interesting observation is that a lot of hybridization events (i.e. about half) originate from species other than the alpha, beta, and gamma Synechococcus species from which the genomes that are analyzed here derive. For this to occur, these other species must presumably also be living in the same habitat and must be relatively abundant. But if they are, why are they not being captured by the sampling? I did not see a clear explanation for this very common occurrence of hybridization events from outside of these Synechococcus species. The authors raise the possibility that these other species used to live in these hot springs but are now extinct. I'm not sure how plausible this is and wonder if there would be some way to find support for this in the data (e.g that one does not observe recent events of import from one of these unknown other species). This was one major finding that I believe went without a clear interpretation.

The core entities in the paper are groups of orthologous genes that show clear evidence of hybridization. It is thus very frustating that exactly the methods for identifying and classifying these hybridization events were really difficult to understand (sections I and V of the supplement). Even after several readings, I was unsure of exactly how orthogroups were classified, i.e. what the difference between M and X clusters is, what a `simple hybrid' corresponds to (as opposed to complex hybrids?), what precisely the definitions of singlet and non-singlet hybrids are, etcetera. It also seems that some numbers reported in the main text do not match what is shown in the supplement. For example, the main text talks about "around 80 genes with more than three clusters (SM, Sec. V; fig. S17).", but there is no group with around 80 genes shown in Fig S17! And similarly, it says "We found several dozen (100 in α and 84 in β) simple hybrid loci" and I also cannot match those numbers to what is shown in the supplement. I am convinced that what the authors did probably made sense. But as a reader, it is frustrating that when one tries to understand the results in detail, it is very difficult to understand what exactly is going on. I mention this example in detail because the hybrid classification is the core of this paper, but I had similar problems in other sections.

Although I generally was quite convinced by the methods and it was clear that the authors were doing a very thorough job, there were some instances where I did not understand the analysis. For example, the way orthogroups were built is very much along the lines used by many in the field (i.e. orthoMCL on the graph of pairwise matchings, building phylogenies of connected components of the graph, splitting the phylogenies along long branches). But then to subdivide orthogroups into clusters of different species, the authors did not use the phylogenetic tree already built but instead used an ad hoc pairwise hierarchical average linkage clustering algorithm.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Birzu et al. describe two sympatric hotspring cyanobacterial species ("alpha" and "beta") and infer recombination across the genome, including inter-species recombination events (hybridization) based on single-cell genome sequencing. The evidence for hybridization is strong and the authors took care to control for artefacts such as contamination during sequencing library preparation. Despite hybridization, the species remain genetically distinct from each other. The authors also present evidence for selective sweeps of genes across both species - a phenomenon which is widely observed for antibiotic resistance genes in pathogens, but rarely documented in environmental bacteria.

Strengths:<br /> This manuscript describes some of the most thorough and convincing evidence to date of recombination happening within and between cohabitating bacteria in nature. Their single-cell sequencing approach allows them to sample the genetic diversity from two dominant species. Although single-cell genome sequences are incomplete, they contain much more information about genetic linkage than typical short-read shotgun metagenomes, enabling a reliable analysis of recombination. The authors also go to great lengths to quality-filter the single-cell sequencing data and to exclude contamination and read mismapping as major drivers of the signal of recombination.

Weaknesses:<br /> Despite the very thorough and extensive analyses, many of the methods are bespoke and rely on reasonable but often arbitrary cutoffs (e.g. for defining gene sequence clusters etc.). Much of this is warranted, given the unique challenges of working with single-cell genome sequences, which are often quite fragmented and incomplete (30-70% of the genome covered). I think the challenges of working with this single-cell data should be addressed up-front in the main text, which would help justify the choices made for the analysis. The conclusions could also be strengthened by an analysis restricted to only a subset of the highest quality (>70% complete) genomes. Even if this results in a much smaller sample size, it could enable more standard phylogenetic methods to be applied, which could give meaningful support to the conclusions even if applied to just ~10 genomes or so from each species. By building phylogenetic trees, recombination events could be supported using bootstraps, which would add confidence to the gene sequence clustering-based analyses which rely on arbitrary cutoffs without explicit measures of support.

The manuscript closes without a cartoon (Figure 4) which outlines the broad evolutionary scenario supported by the data and analysis. I agree with the overall picture, but I do think that some of the temporal ordering of events, especially the timing of recombination events could be better supported by data. In particular, is there evidence that inter-species recombination events are increasing or decreasing over time? Are they currently at steady-state? This would help clarify whether a newly arrived species into the caldera experiences an initial burst of accepting DNA from already-present species (perhaps involving locally adaptive alleles), or whether recombination events are relatively constant over time. These questions could be answered by counting recombination events that occur deeper or more recently in a phylogenetic tree. The cartoon also shows a 'purple' species that is initially present, then donates some DNA to the 'blue' species before going extinct. In this model, 'purple' DNA should also be donated to the more recently arrived 'orange' species, in proportion to its frequency in the 'blue' genome. This is a relatively subtle detail, but it could be tested in the real data, and this may actually help discern the order of the inferred recombination events.

The abstract also makes a bold claim that is not well-supported by the data: "This widespread mixing is contrary to the prevailing view that ecological barriers can maintain cohesive bacterial species..." In fact, the two species are cohesive in the sense that they are identifiable based on clustering of genome-wide genetic diversity (as shown in Fig 1A). I agree that the mixing is 'widespread' in the sense that it occurs across the genome (as shown in Figure 2A) but it is clearly not sufficient to erode species boundaries. So I believe the data is consistent with a Biological Species Concept (sensu Bobay & Ochman, Genome Biology & Evolution 2017) that remains 'fuzzy' - such that there are still inter-species recombination events, just not sufficient to erode the cohesion of genomic clusters. Therefore, I think the data supports the emerging picture of most bacteria abiding by some version of a BSC, and is not particularly 'contrary' to the prevailing view.

The final Results paragraph begins by posing a question about epistatic interactions, but fails to provide a definitive answer to the extent of epistasis in these genomes. Quantifying epistatic effects in bacterial genomes is certainly of interest, but might be beyond the scope of this paper. This could be a Discussion point rather than an underdeveloped section of the Results.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Despite evidence suggesting the benefits of neutralizing mucosa-derived IgA in the upper airway in protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, all currently approved vaccines are administered intramuscularly, which mainly induces systemic IgG. Waki et al. aimed to characterize the benefits of intranasal vaccination at the molecular level by isolating B cell clones from nasal tissue. The authors found that Spike-specific plasma cells isolated from the spleen of vaccinated mice showed significant clonal overlap with Spike-specific plasma cells isolated from nasal tissue. Interestingly, they could not detect any spike-specific plasma cells in the bone marrow or Peyer's patches, indicating that these nose-derived cells did not necessarily home to and reside in these locations, although the Peyer's patch is not a typical plamsa cell niche - rather the lamina propria of the gut would have been a better place to look. Furthermore, they found that multimerization improves the antibody/antigen binding when the antibody is of low or intermediate affinity, but that high-affinity monomeric antibodies do not benefit from multimerization. Lastly, the authors used a competitive ELISA assay to show that multimerization could improve the neutralizing capacity of these antibodies.

The strength of this paper is the cloning of multiple IgA from the nasal mucosae (n=99) and the periphery (n=114) post-SARS-CoV-2 i.n. vaccination to examine the clonal relationship of this IgA with other sites, including the spleen. This analysis provides novel insights into the nature of the mucosal antibody response at the site where the host would encounter the virus, and whether this IgA response disseminates to other tissues.

There were also some weaknesses:

1. The finding that multimerization improves binding and neutralization is not surprising as this was observed before by Wang and Nussenzweig for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgA (authors should cite Enhanced SARS-CoV-2 neutralization by dimeric IgA. Wang et al, Sci. Transl. Med 2021, 13:3abf1555). In addition, as far as I can tell we cannot ascertain the purity of fractions from the size exclusion chromatography thus I wasn't sure whether the input material used in Fig. 4 was a mixed population of dimer/trimer/tetramer?

2. The flow cytometric assessment of the IgA+ clones from the nasal mucosae was difficult to interpret (Fig. 1B). It was hard for me to tell what they were gating on and subsequently analysing without an IgA-negative population for reference.

3. While the i.n. study itself is large and challenging, it would have been interesting to compare an i.m. route and examine the breadth of SARS-CoV-2 variant S1 binding for IgGs as in Fig. 2A. Are the IgA responses derived from the mucosae of greater breadth than systemic IgG responses? Alternatively, and easier, authors could do some comparisons with well-characterized IgG mAb for affinity and cross-reactivity as a benchmark to compare with the IgAs they looked at.

Overall the authors did a good job of looking at a large range of systemic vs mucosal S1-specific antibodies in the context of an intra-nasal vaccination and this provides additional evidence for the utility of mucosal vaccination approaches for reducing person-to-person transmission.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This research demonstrates the breadth of IgA response as determined by isolating individual antigen-specific B cells and generating mAbs in mice following intranasal immunization of mice with SARS-CoV2 Spike protein. The findings show that some IgA mAb can neutralize the virus, but many do not. Notable immunization with Wuhan S protein generates a weak response to the omicron variant.

Strengths:<br /> Detailed analysis characterizing individual B cells with the generation of mAbs demonstrates the response's breadth and diversity of IgA responses and the ability to generate systemic immune responses.

Weaknesses:<br /> The data presentation needs clarity, and results show mAb ability to inhibit SARS-CoV2 in vitro. How IgA functions in vivo is uncertain.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This is a well-designed study, with clear results that is also very well-written.<br /> The authors nicely demonstrate that previous contradictory results are largely due to the lack of the proper baseline condition (Exp 1 and Exp 2). The second experiment also replicates the previous study results that had found enhancement. However, the addition of the proper baseline allows for a completely different interpretation of the same results. In the final experiment, they further probe the role of prediction in attenuation of predicted touch and demonstrate that attenuation is due to the ability to predict the consequences of active touch.

Overall, I found the paper had many strengths including the pre-registered protocols, the replication of findings both in favor of attenuation and enhancements, the inclusion of a baseline condition to compare active touch manipulations, and lastly a rigorous analysis of the data.

While in part this confirms previous results on sensory attenuation, it also helps interpret previous results that suggest the contrary. Therefore the results will be of high value to the community.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Many studies have found that self-generated tactile contact is perceived as weaker than the same contact with an external source. A recent high-profile study found that a force that was predictable based on a participant's own movement but was not caused by contact was perceived as stronger than the same force in an interleaved no-go condition without movement. By combining methods from this and older studies within a single design, the present study resolves the apparent contradiction by showing that the predictable force is enhanced only relative to the no-go reference, and that forces are attenuated when self-contact occurs or is predicted.

The key strength of this work lies in the robust application of pre-registered methods to reproduce and compare findings within a single experimental setting that have been separately interpreted as enhancement or attenuation in previous work. The results are admirably clear and decisive.

I feel there is room for some conceptual clarification when it comes to the discussion of appropriate baselines. The paper tends (as does the preceding work by Thomas et al.) towards claims of the absolute kind, such as "self-generated sensation is attenuated" (or "enhanced"), that are not meaningful because the scales of sensation and stimulus are incommensurate (e.g. there is no sensation that is objectively equal to 2N of force on the finger). Rather, the only claims that can or should be made are relative ones, e.g. "self-generated sensation is attenuated *compared to* externally-generated sensation". The present results provide a strong confirmation of this existing claim while clarifying that the recent findings of Thomas et al.'s Exp 1 could be better summarized as "predictable sensations are enhanced in trials with a GO signal compared to a NOGO signal". So it is not that one study chose the "right" baseline and the other the "wrong" one, but rather that Thomas et al. extrapolated their results to comparisons other than the one they had tested.

The paper does not directly address Thomas et al.'s Exp 2, in which they observed enhanced sensation of force in an expected compared to an unexpected finger. Because there was never any (real or virtual) contact between the fingers in that experiment, the authors would probably argue that it is irrelevant to the classical "predictive attenuation" hypothesis, but the results nonetheless suggest the existence of another factor influencing force perception that is not explained by NOGO inhibition.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The authors sought to directly compare the predictions of two models of somatosensory processing: The attenuation model, which states that the sensation of touch on one hand is reduced when it is the predictable result of an active movement by the other hand; and the enhancement model, which states that the sensation of touch is actually increased, as long as the active hand does not receive touch stimultaneously with the passive hand (no double stimulation). The authors achieved their aims, with results clearly demonstrating (1) attenuation in the case of self touch, (2) that previously-observed enhancement is a consequence of the comparison condition (false enhancement), and (3) that attenuation involves predictive mechanisms and does not result simply from double stimulation. These findings, and the methodology, should particularly impact future studies of perceptual attenuation, sensory prediction error, and motor control more generally. The opposite conclusions obtainable by selecting different comparison conditions is particularly striking.

Experiment 1 affirms that a touch to the passive finger caused by the active finger tapping a force sensor is perceived as weaker (attenuated) compared to a baseline not involving the active finger, but that if double stimulation is prevented (active finger moves, but no contact), neither attenuation nor enhancement occurs. Experiment 2 includes the three original conditions, plus the no-go condition used as a comparison in these earlier studies. Results suggest that the comparisons used by previous studies would result in the false appearance of enhancement. Finally, Experiment 3 tests the hypothesis that the lack of attenuation in the no-contact condition is due to the absence of double stimulation rather than predictive mechanisms. When contact and no-contact trials were mixed in an 80:20 ratio, such that participants would form predictions about the consequence of their active finger movement even if some trials lacked contact. In this case, attenuation was observed for both contact and no-contact trials, supporting the idea that attenuation is related to predictive processes linked to moving the active finger, and is not a simple consequence of double stimulation.

The methodology and analysis plans for all three experiments were pre-registered prior to data collection. We can therefore be very confident that the results were not influenced by hypotheses developed only after seeing the data. The three experiments were each performed in a new set of participants. Experiments 2 and 3 included conditions that replicated the Experiment 1 effects, allowing us to be very confident that the results are robust.

While the study has significant strengths, some aspects of the interpretation need to be clarified. In particular, the authors' interpretation depends on the idea that attenuation is absent in the no-contact condition because this action-sensory consequence relationship is an "arbitrary mapping." It is not clear what makes it arbitrary. The self-touch contact condition could also be considered somewhat arbitrary and different from real self-touch; the 2N test force was triggered by the right finger tapping a force sensor. If participants' tapping forces were recorded, it would be useful to include this information, particularly about how variable participants' taps were. In other words, unlike real self-touch, in this paradigm the force of the active finger tap did not affect the force delivered to the passive finger. One additional potential weakness is that participants' vision was occluded in Experiment 3, but not in Experiments 1 and 2. The authors do not discuss whether this difference could confound any of the analyses that compare results across experiments.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In this manuscript the authors perform a detailed analysis of the impact of food type on reproduction in C. elegans. They find that, in comparison with the standard OP50 strain of E. coli that is ubiquitously used to maintain C. elegans in the laboratory setting, the CS180 strain results in a reduction in the number of progeny that may be a consequence of an early transition from spermatogenesis to oogenesis that reduces total sperm number. They also find that the rate of oocyte fertilization is increased in animals fed CS180 vs. OP50. Using mutants and laser ablations, the authors show that, whereas the insulin-like peptide INS-6 acts in the ASJ sensory neurons to mediate the food type effect on total progeny and early oogenesis, the increased fertilization rate phenotype does not require ASJ or insulin-like signaling and instead requires the AWA olfactory neurons.

The major strengths of the manuscript are the establishment of INS-6 as a link between food type and reproduction and the detail and rigor with which the experiments were executed. The results presented generally support the authors' model. This role of insulin-like signaling in connecting food type and reproduction makes it a plausible target for evolutionary forces that may have shaped insulin-like signaling in invertebrates. As such, this work contributes broadly to our understanding of how insulin signaling may have evolved prior to the emergence of vertebrates.

A weakness of the work is the epistasis analysis of insulin-like pathway components, which is incomplete and at times difficult to interpret.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Mishra et al. examines the modulation of the nervous system by different bacterial food to influence reproductive phenotypes-specifically onset of oogenesis, fertilization rate, and progeny production. Defining how animal reproduction could be modulated by bacterial food cues through neuroendocrine signaling is a fascinating subject of study for which C. elegans is well-suited. However, the overall scope of the current study is limited, and some of the central data do not provide compelling evidence for the authors' underlying hypothesis and model.

1. Two strains of E. coli are examined, the standard C. elegans bacterial food strain OP50 and an E. coli strain that Alcedo and colleagues have previously characterized to influence aging and longevity through nervous system modulation. While the authors determine that differences in LPS structure present between the strains does not account for the food-dependent effects, there is little further insight regarding the bacterial features that contribute to the observed differences in reproductive physiology. Moreover, at least two of the phenotypes examined-total progeny and fertilization rate-are known to be affected by bacterial food quality and may be affected by bacteria in many ways, so the description of these phenotypes is somewhat less compelling than the study of the onset of oogenesis.

2. The onset of oogenesis phenotype, using the lin-41::GFP reporter, seems more specific and tractable, and the authors nicely decouple this phenotype from the total progeny and fertilization rate phenotypes through experiments that shift animals to different bacterial food at specific developmental stages. However, as it stands, the data regarding the role of ins-6 and ASJ in modulating this phenotype, and the model that exposure to CS180 bacterial food causes a change in the ASJ expression of ins-6, which is sufficient to promote the earlier onset of oogenesis at the mid-L4 stage, seems somewhat incomplete and have some inconsistencies to be addressed.

a. The ins-6 mutant phenotype is rescued by genome ins-6 and partially rescued by ins-6 expressed under and ASJ-specific promoter. The lack of rescue from an ASI promoter is puzzling given the secreted nature of ins-6.

b. The ins-6 mutant phenotype with regard to delaying the early expression of lin-41::GFP on CS180 appears weaker than the daf-2 mutant phenotype. This is difficult to reconcile with what is known about the relative strength of the daf-2 mutant alleles relative to ins-6 for a wide range of phenotypes.

c. The daf-16 loss-of-function phenotype and suppression of daf-2 and ins-6 mutant phenotypes are not shown for the lin-41::GFP expression phenotype.

d. The modest difference in ins-6p::mCherry expression in the ASJ neurons (Figure 5D) make the idea that this difference causes onset of oogenesis somewhat implausible.

e. The strain carrying an genetic ablation of ASJ appears to have a markedly different baseline of kinetics of lin-41::GFP expression (even at lethargus, less than half of the animals appear to express lin-41::GFP). Given this phenotype, it seems difficult to draw conclusions about bacterial food-dependent effects on expression of lin-41::GFP. Additional characterization corroborating timing of oogenesis independent of the lin-41::GFP marker may be helpful, but something seems amiss.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

I very much enjoyed reading this paper by Shashwat Mishra and team from Joy Alcedo's and from Queelim Ch'ng's laboratories dissecting how sensory signals regulate reproduction in worms. The mechanisms by which sensory inputs affect the function of the germline, the balance between growth and differentiation within this tissue, are of broad interest not only to those interested in reproduction and differentiation, but also to those interested in the mechanisms of plasticity that enable organisms to adjust to changing environmental conditions. These mechanisms are only now beginning to be characterized. Here the focus is on the role of insulin signals expressed in sensory neurons. This work builds on previous findings by the Alcedo lab that sensory perception of bacterial-type dependent signals regulates C. elegans lifespan. Here their focus is on the effects on reproduction, and on the communication of that information by insulin-like signals.

Worms have a huge family of 40 insulin-like genes, which the Alcedo and Ch'ng labs have been studying for many years. The paper starts with the interesting premise that the brood size of the worms is food type dependent. The authors show that this is due to effects on the timing of the onset of oogenesis during larval development (which constrains the size of the pool of sperm available for subsequent oocyte fertilization) as well as on effects on the rate of oocyte fertilization during adulthood. Using clever timing for food switching, they show that the effects on oogenesis onset and on fertilization rate are separable. In addition, these effects did not appear to be merely the outcome of indirect effects of food ingestion, but were, instead, at least in part, due to the perception of environmental information by specific sensory neurons. Using mutants affecting transduction of sensory information in specific neurons and genetic ablation of specific neurons, the authors show that the onset of oogenesis and the rate of reproduction were controlled by different sensory neurons, ASJ and AWA, respectively. One of these neurons, ASJ, transmitted environmental information via the ins-6 neuropeptide.

Altogether, the paper advances our understanding of how environmental determinants influence reproduction.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Justynski et al., addresses an important question in the field of efferocytosis, namely how does the clearance of apoptotic cells promote wound healing. A major highlight of this work is the profiling of the transcriptional heterogeneity during the inflammatory phase of the wound healing program via single cell sequencing. Many of the genes analyzed in the manuscript are well-known players in efferocytosis and wound healing so the contribution of this work is the dynamic and high resolution temporal and cell type specific responses during injury mediated inflammation.

Overall the manuscript is technically sound and the conclusions are generally supported by the data. However, the authors are cautioned to tone down some of the sentences with the human diabetic samples as they rely heavily on extrapolation rather experimental tests. Other areas of improvement include the relatively simplistic approaches and interpretation of the results. For instance, the antibody inhibition of Axl had minimal effect on the clearance of apoptotic cells in the wound and this would be expected with the redundancy endowed by other TAM receptors.

There are also some inconsistencies between the quantifications and the representative images provided. For instance, in Figure 6, the number of TUNEL+ cells seem to be higher in the IgG samples compared to the anti-Timd4 treatment, but this is not the case in the quantification.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Based on their results the authors make the following statements:<br /> 1) Apoptotic pathways and efferocytosis receptors are elevated in fibroblasts and immune cells in mouse skin wounds. Based on the analysis of the scRNASeq data this is a valid conclusion.

I suggest to repeat the quantification of cells containing active caspase-3 with an anti-cleaved caspase-3 antibody. Here the authors use an antibody recognizing phospho S150 antibody, which is far from generally accepted to be a marker for active caspase-3.

It would also be good to quantify the apoptotic cells observed in the sections (Fig 1 I and J) and compare to control treatment on sections. It is not clear from the data presented whether the number of apoptotic cells increases or not in the time frame analyzed since the controls are lacking. In a FACS analysis (Fig S1 H), the authors show that there is no increase in dead cells in a time frame of 48 hrs. Could it be that the majority of the cells that may have died in vivo, were lost during the procedure of tissue digestions. Dead cells tend to aggregate.

On line 104 the authors refer to the apoptosis-inducing activity of G0s2. Please, realize that there is little or no in vivo evidence for a role of G0s2 in apoptosis.

The authors state that Axl is uniquely expressed in DC and fibroblasts (Fig 2). Are the Axl-cells positive in panel G (red, Fig 2) that do not stain for the Pdgfra marker (green) then all DCs? Please clarify or show with a triple staining that these cells are indeed DCs. In addition, it is not clear to me to what reference level exactly the expression levels are compared in Fig 2A. Is this between the 24 and 48h time points after wounding (as mentioned in the legend)? If so, the analysis may indicate up or down regulation but not necessarily expression or no expression.

2) Human diabetic wounds display increased and altered efferocytosis signaling via Axl.<br /> This conclusion is solely based on CellChat analysis and should be tuned down or validated. Tools like CellChat or NicheNet generate data that are suggestive and help scientist to build hypothesis. However, these data do not hold formal proof, but should be experimentally validated. Alternatively, the statement should be downtuned.

3) Axl expression is regulated via an TLR3-independent mechanism during wounding. This statement is supported by analysis in a genetic mouse model.

4) In mice, Axl signaling is required for wound repair but is dispensable for efferocytosis.<br /> This was concluded based on an in vivo experiment in which the authors treat the mice during wound healing with neutralizing anti-Axl antibodies that were validated in literature. The effectivity of the treatment is checked by analyzing the Axl mRNA levels since Axl activation upregulates its own mRNA expression levels. Anti-Axl therapy resulted in a downregulation of the Axl mRNA levels, while IFN-beta levels (an inducer of Axl expression) were upregulated by the treatment.<br /> The authors conclude that anti-Axl treatment leads to healing defects based on lack of granulation tissue and larger scabs, a reduction of fibroblast repopulation and revascularization. The differences in the last two parameters mentioned above are obvious, however the other parameters, as granulation tissue and scabs are less clear to me. Is this quantified in any way? In Fig S4 D there is also a large scab visible in the control treatment image. Therefore, it would be good if these parameters could be better substantiated. In view of the lack of revascularization, are there differences in the mRNA expression levels of angiogenic factors such as VEGF and others at this time point? Does revascularization occur at later stages?.<br /> Based on the FACS analysis the authors claim that there are no differences at the level of DCs. However, the plots shown in Fig 5C do not convincingly show the detection of DC (as boxed in the lower panel). Based on the density plots one would presume this is just the continuation of the CD11b+ population and not a separate CD11c+ population. To get a better view on that, it would be better to show dot plots instead of density plots.<br /> Finally, the authors state (line 265-266) that anti-Axl treatment leads to non-significantly increased expression of IL1alpha and IL6 after one day of injury (Fig S4C). If the difference between the control-treated and the anti-Axl-treated group is statistically not significant I would not conclude there is an increase. Please adapt phrasing or include more mice in the experiment (now only 4) to substantiate the observation and clarify whether it is increased or not.

5) Inhibition of the efferocytosis receptor Timd4 decreases efferocytosis and abrogates wound repair.<br /> The reason to study the effect of Timd4 was based on the fact that the authors find it upregulated on DCs during wound healing.<br /> The contribution of Timd4 in wound healing was investigated in vivo, under conditions in which the mice were treated with an anti-Timd4 antibody.<br /> The authors conclude that overall healing was not affected but that the wound beds appeared more fragile. What is meant with 'appeared more fragile' is not clear. In addition, this seems to me a quite subjective interpretation. What are the objective parameters to come this conclusion?<br /> Similar to inhibition of Axl, inhibition of Timd4 led to a defect in revascularization as witnessed by the absence of CD31 staining. Also in this experiment one can raise similar questions as in the anti-Axl experiment: 1) does revascularization occur at a later timepoint; 2) what about the expression of angiogenic factors?<br /> In the anti-Timd4 treated wounds the authors observe more TUNEL-positive cells and conclude that this is due to a defect in efferocytosis. However, the formal experimental proof for this in the current model is lacking. How do the authors exclude the possibility that anti-Timd4 treatment attracts more infiltrating cells that then undergo treatment, or that the treatment with anti-Timd4 leads to more apoptosis of certain cells in the wound bed. What is the nature of these apoptotic cells (neutrophils, T cells, others)? It has been shown that Timd4 can have stimulatory effects on other cells, such as T cells. Could deprivation of Timd4 signaling in certain conditions lead to more dying cells in this model?

Based on the comments and concerns raised above, this study appears premature at this stage.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This is a clearly written report on experiments examining apoptosis and efferocytosis gene alterations in the very early stages of cutaneous wound healing. The authors have identified a number of differentially expressed genes related to apoptosis and efferocytosis in fibroblasts, neutrophils, dendritic cells and monocytes/macrophages. Additional functional experiments were carried out which show that inhibiting efferocytosis pathways can alter different aspects of wound healing, depending on the pathway that is targeted. The scRNA-seq data in mouse wounds is rigorous and follow-up functional studies in mice were done, which is an overall strength of the work. The main weaknesses were related to small sample sizes for some experiments and some conclusions that were not supported by strong data. Overall, this is interesting work that could be bolstered with additional supporting data for some key experiments.

1) The authors suggest in several places that efferocytosis must be occurring rapidly since the number of apoptotic cells are not high in their samples. There are issues with this conclusion in my opinion. They never do show that there is an increase in apoptotic cells in the wounds, which then go down (which would be a sign that the cells are being cleared via efferocytosis. In addition, they are looking for apoptotic cells at very early time points (24-48 hours), times at which large numbers of apoptotic cells would not be expected. As an example, neutrophil infiltration peaks at 24-48 hours and efferocytosis of apoptotic neutrophils would be expected after that. Other types of apoptotic cells would likely be cleared even later. Finally, several of the panels showing apoptotic cells were done with a very small number of samples (1-3 per group) in some cases so it is unclear how rigorous the data are. I would recommend that the authors at the very least soften the wording related to these conclusions and discuss the limitations of their experimental design; ideally data from more samples would be included to provide clear support those statements.

2) The human RNA-seq data is also quite limited, as non-diabetic wound tissue was all from one patient. Again, this limitation should be acknowledged. Also, there are some important published papers by Sashwati Roy's group indicating that there are defects in efferocytosis in diabetic wounds, which may go against what the authors are showing here to some degree. Discussion of the authors' work in relation to these other studies should be discussed.

3) For anti-Axl and anti-Timd4 experiments, the authors conclude that inhibition of Axl does not affect TUNEL+ cells and that Timd4 does not affect reepithelialization. However, in some cases the sample size was only 3 mice per group when measuring these parameters. That is a very small number of samples to draw conclusions about apoptotic cells or reepithelialization since these parameters are key for the overall conclusions of the experiments. Given that these are key data, it would be important to include more than n=3. Additionally, as stated above, a time point later than 24 h may be necessary to actually see changes in apoptotic cells.

4) In Fig 6, there look to be many more TUNEL+ cells in the wound bed of IgG control samples compared to anti-Timd4-treated samples, which contradicts the graph. Perhaps the authors could clarify where they were taking their measurements for panels with image analysis results. Another question related to this experiment is how it is possible that efferocytosis is so drastically different yet there are no changes in wound healing (this is one reason why a larger sample size for reepithelialization may be critical) - this would seem to suggest that efferocytosis is not important in wound healing, which is confusing. Further discussion on this might be useful.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Recently, chromatin-associated RNAs (caRNAs) were found to be involved in transcriptional regulation through multiple mechanisms, playing important roles in disease and development. Mitochondria has its own genome known as mtDNA, which codes crucial genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation. Additionally, mtDNA produces non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), including small and long noncoding RNAs, the functions of which are still being explored. The communication between mitochondria and the nucleus is essential for coordinating gene expression and cellular function. Recent studies have identified the presence of mitochondrial RNAs (mtRNAs) in the nucleus, such as SncmtRNA, which can influence stress-induced transcription of genes related to cell adhesion.

In this manuscript, using the iMARI (in situ mapping of RNA-Genome Interactions) technology developed by the authors, they found that mitochondria-encoded lncRNA plays a role in regulating nuclear gene expressions. They then performed experimental confirmation, bulk-RNA-seq, snRNA, and scRNA-seq to demonstrate and verify the function of SncmtRNA in regulating nuclear gene expression in endothelial cells. This discovery is ground-breaking and the manuscript provides convincing evidence that mitochondrial RNAs can enter the cellular nucleus to regulate gene expression.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The communication between mitochondria and the nucleus is crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis and coordinating various cellular processes. The work by Sriram and colleagues discovers a potentially novel messenger molecule between mitochondrial-nuclear crosstalk through the widespread association of mitochondrial RNAs with nuclear chromatin. They termed this as mt-caRNAs that establishes a direct connection between mtRNA and the epigenome. These mt-caRNAs were found to preferentially attach to promoter regions, which led them to investigate how mt-caRNAs may regulate nuclear-encoded transcripts. Using an endothelial cell model, depletion/ overexpression of a specific mt-caRNA altered stress-induced transcription of nuclear genes encoding for innate inflammation and endothelial activation. Overall, these findings are interesting and warrant further investigation of the role of mt-caRNA-mediated nuclear transcription in controlling cellular processes.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In their work, Akuma and colleagues identify the autoprocessing in cis of casp11 as a key step that allows the aggregation of casp11, and its capacity to cleave GSDMD and induce pyroptosis. The authors utilize, for the first time, a fluorescent casp11 that allowed us to visualize its aggregation (formation of specks). This is a key event that was largely overlooked for casp11. Indeed, casp11 directly binds LPS and initiates pyroptosis in the absence of other NLR members and adaptors such as ASC. While NLRs and adaptors form the structure that allows the recruitment and cleavage of casp1, how casp11 specks are formed remained unknown so far. Using casp11 mutants that lack the catalytic activity or the autoprocessing site, as well as casp11 that can be cleaved by other proteases, the authors demonstrate that self-cleavage of casp11 is a pre-requisite for aggregation and speck formation. Also, by using their mutants the authors demonstrated that casp11 acts in cis, rather than in trans, to exert this function. So far, mostly based on casp1 biology, the main view was that aggregation is a prerequisite for cleaving. Here the authors changed this view for casp11, and found that casp11 autocleavage is upstream of its aggregation induced upon LPS sensing. They found that initial dimerization and subsequent oligomerization are two distinct events and that LPS binding of casp11 is insufficient to assemble the non-canonical inflammasome.

The paper makes use of elegant mutant caspases and is based on solid bases. Some experiments lack analyses of the functional consequences of non-canonical inflammasome formation, and the paper would benefit from this type of analysis.

Another key finding is that Cys-254 plays more roles than "simply" cleaving casp11 at D285. This finding needs to be better highlighted also in the abstract because it opens more future investigations.

Also, the separation between dimerization and oligomerization may open to future studies and may be briefly mentioned also in the abstract.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Casp11 is a cytosolic sensor for LPS in mice (orthologue of Casp4/5 in human). It is an important innate sensor of intracellular infection. Casp11 activity results in cleavage and activation of the pore-forming protein Gasdemin D (GSDMD) leading to lytic death (pyroptosis), of an infected cell. How exactly Casp11 signals upon LPS detection is beginning to be understood, but the picture is incomplete. Previous reports suggested that upon LPS detection, Casp11 dimerizes and undergoes auto-processing to form a pyroptosis-competent enzyme. The prediction from these studies was that the formation of a fully functional Casp11 signalling complex involves two steps: inducible dimerization and auto-processing.

In this study, authors used fluorescently tagged Casp11 reporter fusions, to report that detection of cytosolic LPS induces Casp11 assembly into a large perinuclear speck to form a signalling complex, where GSDMD can be processed. Such signalling complex resembles signalling specks formed upon the activation of other canonical inflammasomes.

Strengths:

Results are clean, experiments well controlled, and support the conclusions. Overall conclusions fit nicely in the general principle of innate signalling, whereby activation of many innate sensors results in their inducible assembly into higher-order oligomeric signalling complexes, called supra-molecular organizing centers (SMOCs).

A surprising finding from this work was that catalytically inactive Casp11 (C254A mutant) did not form signalling specks, despite being able to bind LPS and dimerise. This model is proposed where LPS binding to the CARD domain of Casp11 and Casp11 dimerization is necessary but not sufficient to mediate Casp11 speck formation within cells. The Casp11 catalytic activity is needed to facilitate the assembly of the higher-order, pyroptosis-competent Casp11 signalling platform. The model is further supported by experimental evidence that auto-processing of Casp11, by an exogenous protease TEV, (i.e. in the absence of LPS), is sufficient to mediate speck assembly in cells expressing wild type, but not catalytically inactive Casp11 mutant.

Possible technical improvements:

In general, the authors achieved their aims, and the results support the conclusions.

For technical robustness, it would be nice to consider a few controls:<br /> (a) Visualise Casp11 specks using constructs with smaller tags, and test whether tag placement on N or C terminus matters for speck formation; or<br /> (b) Biochemically crosslink and isolate endogenous, untagged Casp11 specks upon LPS transfection of primed macrophages (e.g. after priming through IFNs or TLRs). This would mimic the natural upregulation and activation of endogenous Casp11.<br /> (c) Test what happens after actual intracellular pathogen detection when the pathogen itself serves as a signalling platform? Are specks stills formed (or even needed)?

The broad impact of the work, implication, and questions for future work:

Results of this study would suggest that the enzymatic activity of Casp11 in macrophages may be highly restricted to the speck location, similar to what was described for Casp1. This may explain the very restricted substrate repertoire of Casp11 in cells, likely controlled by the substrate recruitment to the speck. This also opens avenues for follow-up work to answer several emerging questions:

1. After LPS binding and dimerization, why Casp11 must undergo intra-molecular processing to induce the formation of a pyroptosis-competent speck? Is there any substrate for LPS-bound, uncleaved Casp11 (beyond Casp11 itself), before Casp11 forms a full speck for GSDMD processing? The only currently known targets of Casp11 activity are itself, and GSDMD. Also, after intradomain linker cleavage of Casp11, what additional substrate must the cleaved Casp11 process to allow full speck formation?

2. Can activity probes be designed to detect the location of the active Casp11, and if so, would the activity of Casp11 be restricted to the speck? Is there a second cleavage event that would eventually dissociate Casp11 from the speck, to terminate its signalling? If not, how is speck activity terminated? If specks are released by lysis, are they capable of seeding new speck formation in neighbouring phagocytes, in prion-like behaviour previously described for canonical ASC speck?

3. What is the role of macrophage priming in speck formation, and what roles, if any GBPs play in speck formation?

4. Does this model apply to human orthologues, Casp4/5?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Casp11 plays an important role in host defense against a wide range of pathogens; however, it also promotes autoinflammatory disorders when dysregulated. Unlike other ASC-dependent receptors, Casp11 forms a non-canonical inflammasome via LPS-indued self-assembly. Here, Brodsky and colleagues report that the catalytic activity of casp11 is required to form LPS-induced "SMOCs."

Here are my concerns/questions:

• I'm having some difficulty understanding the logic of Figure 5 in determining cis processing. It is an inverse of figure 4, and in my view, provides further evidence of trans processing. A better experiment would to be use WT-citrine tagged protein with catalytic dead mcherry and image them together. This would show WT cis processing occurs faster than trans processing as citrine specks should appear earlier than the mCherry ones. Can also do colocalization and FRET-based assays with the pair.

• Do those casp11 specks still contain CARDs?- i.e. is the second cleavage necessary for speck formation? Is CARD necessary at all? Would adding the TEV site at CDL and b/w p20 and p10 rescue? i.e. trans-activate?

• What are the equations that fit experimental data points and R2 for? E.g. Figure 1E. What are the parameters being fitted/compared and how are those interpreted? A table of fitted values and proper interpretation should be provided.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This paper examines different signaling networks and attempts to give general results for when the network will exhibit biphasic behavior, which is the situation when the output of the network is a non-monotonic function of its inputs. The strength of the paper is in the approach it takes. It starts with the simplest network motifs that produce biphasic behavior and then asks too what happens when these motifs are parts of larger networks. Their approach is in contrast to the usual way in which this question is tackled, which tends to be within the confines of a specific signaling network, where general results like the ones that the authors are after, might be hard to spot.

The weakness of the paper, in my opinion, is the rather formal description of the results which I am afraid will be of rather limited utility to experimental groups seeking to make use of them. The paper attempts to provide general rules for when to expect biphasic behavior and it was hard to assess to what extent such rules exist as behaviors can change depending on the context of a larger network in which the smaller biphasic one is embedded. The other thing that made assessing the generality of the results difficult is that the input-output functions shown in all the figures are computed for a specific choice of parameters and I was left wondering how different choices of parameters might change the reported behaviors. The lack of specific proposals for how their results should guide future experiments on different signaling networks is another weakness.

While I appreciate that the authors adopted a style of presenting their results such that all the mathematics is buried in the figures, I found that it made reading the paper quite difficult, and contributed to my confusion about which results are general and insensitive to parameter choices and which are not. I believe a narrative that integrated the math with some simple intuition might have been more effective. For example, when the authors say in the text that model M0 is incapable of displaying biphasic response, how general is that result? Later on, when discussing model M2, they provide a criterion for biphasic response in terms of products of rate constants satisfying an inequality, but the meaning of this condition is not described. Such things make it hard to learn from the authors' work.

The text is sprinkled with statements like "this reveals the plurality of information processing behaviors..." where the meaning is quite opaque (for this example, there is no description of "information processing" and what it might mean in this context) and therefore it makes it hard to understand what are the lessons learned from these calculations. Another example is found in the description of Erk regulation where the authors speak of "significant robustness" but what is meant by "significant" is also unclear.

Overall, I think this is an interesting attempt to provide a general mathematical framework for analyzing biphasic response of signaling networks, but the authors fall short for the reasons described above. I think a lot can be fixed by improving the way the results are presented.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Biphasic responses are widely observed in biological systems and the determination of general design principles underlying biphasic responses is an important problem. The authors attempt to study this problem using a range of biochemical signaling models ranging from simple enzymatic modification and de-modification of a single substrate to systems with multiple enzymes and substrates. The authors used analytical and computational calculations to determine conditions such as network topology, range of concentrations, and rate parameters that could give rise to biphasic responses. I think the approach and the result of their investigation are interesting and can be potentially useful. However, the conditions for biphasic responses are described in terms of parameter ranges or relationships in particular biochemical models, and these parameters have not been connected to the values of concentrations or rates in real biological systems. This makes it difficult to evaluate how these findings would be applicable in nature or in experiments. It might also help if some general mechanisms in terms of competition/cooperation of time scales/processes are gleaned which potentially can be used to analyze biphasic responses in real biological systems.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This interesting manuscript sets out to develop for the mouse a series of important concepts and models that this group has previously developed for models of monkey brains, where they showed that in a large-scale model, anterior → posterior spatial gradients such as spine density (and thus inferred strength of local coupling) lead to a transition from transient stimulus responses to persistent responses, capable of supporting working memory (WM). No such spine density gradient is found in the mouse. Here, the authors propose and use modeling to explore the idea, that the corresponding gradient may be that of density of inhibitory PV cells in different regions of the brain.

The goal of the study - a large-scale, anatomically-constrained model of WM - is an extremely valuable one, and the authors' efforts in this direction should be supported. That said, some of the main claims in the manuscript were not, at least as currently written, clearly supported by the data, a number of important clarifications need to be made, and some claims of novelty are made in a way that, for a typical reader, may obscure the actual contribution being made.

The biggest issue is that one of the main claims, that together with cell-type specific long-range targeting, "density of cell classes define working memory representations" (abstract), is not terribly clear. For example, Figs. 2D and 2E show that a brain region's hierarchical location tightly predicts its persistent firing rate (2D), but that PV cell fraction has a far weaker correlation (2E). Is hierarchical location sufficient? If PV cell fraction were constant across model brain regions, would we still get persistent activity modes? It seems likely that the answer may be "yes", but the answer, easily within reach of the authors, is surprisingly not in the current version of the manuscript. Figure 3D, for the thalamocortical model, shows no significant correlation of firing rate with PV density.

Given the claim about PV density (in the abstract and the first main point of the discussion), this is a big concern. Yet it seems easily addressable: e.g. if indeed the authors found that hierarchy was sufficient and PV density immaterial, the model would be no less interesting. And if the authors demonstrated clearly that a PV density gradient is required, that would make the claim a solid one. If, within the model, such a causal demonstration is present, this reader at least missed it.

MAJOR CONCERNS:

(1) The model appears to be a model of a single side of the brain. Perhaps each brain region in the model could be considered an amalgam of that region across both sides of the brain. Yet given results like Li et al. Nature 2016, who show that persistent activity is robust to inhibition of one side, but not both sides of ALM, at the very least discussion of the issue is warranted.

(2) The authors make an interesting attempt to distinguish core WM regions from other regions such as "readout" regions, defined as showing persistent activity yet not having an effect on persistent activity elsewhere in the network.<br /> However, this definition seemed problematic: for example, consider a network that consists of 20 brain regions, all interconnected to each other, and all equivalent to each other, capable of displaying persistent activity thanks to mutual connectivity. Imagine that inhibition of any one of these regions is not sufficient to significantly perturb persistent activity in the other 19. Then they would all be labeled as "readout". Yet, by construction in this thought experiment, they are all equivalent to each other and are all core areas. Such redundancy may well be present in the brain. How would the authors address this redundancy issue?

(3) Also important to discuss would be the fact that every brain region in this model is set up as composed of two populations, and when long-range interactions are strong and the attractors strongly coupled, the entire brain is set up as a 1-bit working memory. How would results and the approach be impacted by considering WM for more flexible situations?

(4) Another concern that is important yet easily addressed is the authors' use of the term "novel cell-type specific graph theory measures". Describing in the abstract and elsewhere the fact that what they mean is to take into account the sign of connections, not just their magnitude, would transmit to readers the essence of the contribution in a manner very simple to understand. Most readers would fail to grasp the essential point of the current labeling, which sounds potentially very vague and complex.

(5) Finally, the overall significance of the study, and advances over previous work, were not entirely clear. In the discussion, the authors identify three major findings: (1) WM function is shaped by the PV cell density gradient. But as above, further work is required to make it clear that this claim is supported by the model. (2) if local recurrent excitation is insufficient to generate persistent activity, then long-range recurrent excitation is needed to generate it. I had trouble understanding why a model was needed to reach this conclusion - it seems as if it is simply a question of straightforward logic. The discussion states that in this regard, the work here "offers specific predictions to be tested experimentally", but I had trouble identifying what these specific predictions are. (3) Taking into account sign, not only magnitude, of connections, is important. This last point once again seemed a matter of straightforward logic, making its novelty difficult to assess.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

This paper uses the mouse mesoscale connectome, combined with data on the number and fraction of PV-type interneurons, to build a large-scale model of working memory activity in response to inputs from various sensory modalities. The key claims of the paper are two-fold. First, previous work has shown that there does not appear to be an increase in the number of excitatory inputs (spines) per pyramidal neuron along the cortical hierarchy (and this increase was previously suggested to underlie working memory activity occurring preferentially in higher areas along the cortical hierarchy). Thus, the claim is that a key alternative mechanism in the mouse is the heterogeneity in the fraction of PV interneurons. Second, the authors claim to develop novel cell type-specific graph theory.

I liked seeing the authors put all of the mouse connectomic information into a model to see how it behaved and expect that this will be useful to the community at large as a starting point for other researchers wishing to use and build upon such large-scale models. However, I have significant concerns about both primary scientific claims. With regard to the PV fraction, this does not look like a particularly robust result. First, it's a fairly weak result to start, much smaller than the simple effect of the location of an area along the cortical hierarchy (compare Figs. 2D, 2E; 3C, 3D). Second, the result seems to be heavily dependent upon having subdivided the somatosensory cortex into many separate points and focusing the main figures of the paper (and the only ones showing rates as a function of PV cell fraction) solely on simulations in which the sensory input is provided to the visual cortex. With regards to the claim of novel cell type-specific graph theory, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly novel. The authors simply make sure to assign negative rather than positive weights to inhibitory connections in their graph-theoretic analyses.

Major issues:<br /> 1) Weakness of result on effect of PV cell fraction. Comparing Figures 2D and 2E, or 3C and 3D, there is a very clear effect of cortical hierarchy on firing rate during the delay period in Figures 2D and 3C. However, in Figure 2E relating delay period firing rate to PV cell fraction, the result looks far weaker. (And similarly for Figs. 3C, 3D, with the latter result not even significant). Moreover, the PV cell fraction results are dominated by the zero firing rate brain regions (as opposed to being a nice graded set of rates, both for zeros and non-zeros, as with the cortical hierarchy results of Figures 2D), and these zeros are particularly contributed to by subdividing somatosensory (SS) into many subregions, thus contributing many points at the lower right of the graph.<br /> Further, it should be noted that Figure 2E is for visual inputs. In the supplementary Figure 2 - supplement 1, the authors do apply sensory inputs to auditory and somatosensory cortex...but then only show the result that the delay period firing rate increases along the cortical hierarchy (as in Figure 2D for the visual input), but strikingly omit the plots of firing rate versus PV cell fraction. This omission suggests that the result is even weaker for inputs to other sensory modalities, and thus difficult to justify as a defining principle.

2) Graph theoretic analyses. The main comparison made is between graph-theoretic quantities when the quantities account for or do not account for, PV cells contributing negative connection strengths. This did not seem particularly novel.

3) It was not clear to me how much the cell-type specific loop strength results were a result of having inhibitory cell types, versus were a result of the assumption ('counter-stream inhibitory bias') that there is a different ratio of excitation to inhibition in top-down versus bottom-up connections. It seems like the main results were more a function of this assumed asymmetry in top-down vs. bottom-up than it was a function of just using cell-type per se. That is, if one ignored inhibitory neurons but put in the top-down vs. bottom-up asymmetry, would one get the same basic results? And, likewise, if one didn't assume asymmetry in the excitatory vs. inhibitory connectivity in top-down versus bottom-up connections, but kept the Pyramidal and PV cell fraction data, would the basic result go away?

4) In the Discussion, there is a third 'main finding' claimed: "when local recurrent excitation is not sufficient to sustain persistent activity...distributed working memory must emerge from long-range interactions between parcellated areas". Isn't this essentially true by definition?

5) I don't know if it's even "CIB" that's important or just "any asymmetry (excitatory or inhibitory) between top-down vs. bottom-up directions along the hierarchy". This is worth clarifying and thinking more about, as assigning this to inhibition may be over-attributing a more basic need for asymmetry to a particular mechanism.

Other questions:<br /> 1) Is it really true that less than 2% of neurons are PV neurons for some areas? Are there higher fractions of other inhibitory interneuron types for these areas, and does this provide a confound for interpreting model results that don't include these other types?<br /> Maybe related to the above, the authors write in the Results that local excitation in the model is proportional to PV interneuron density. However, in the methods, it looks like there are two terms: a constant inhibition term and a term proportional to density. Maybe this former term was used to account for other cell types. Also, is local excitation in the model likewise proportional to pyramidal interneuron density (and, if not, why not?)?

2) Non-essential areas. The categorization of areas as 'non-essential' as opposed to, e.g. "inputs" is confusing. It seems like the main point is that, since the delay period activity as a whole is bistable, certain areas' contributions may be small enough that, alone, they can't flip the network between its bistable down and up states. However, this does not mean that such areas (such as the purple 'non-essential' area in Figure 5a) are 'non-essential' in the more common sense of the word. Rather, it seems that the purple area is just a 'weaker input' area, and it's confusing to thus label it as 'non-essential' (especially since I'd guess that, whether or not an area flips on/off the bistability may also depend on the assumed strength of the external input signal, i.e. if one made the labeled 'input area' a bit too weak to alone trigger the bistability, then the purple area might become 'essential' to cross the threshold for triggering a bistable-up state).

3) Relation between 'core areas' and loop strength. The measure underlying 'prediction accuracy = 0.93' in Figure 6D and the associated results seems incomplete by being unidirectional. It captures the direction: 'given high cell-type specific loop strength, then core area' but it does not capture the other direction: 'given a cell is part of a core area, is its predicted cell-type specific loop strength strong?'. It would be good to report statistics for both directions of association between loop strength and core area.

4) More justification would be useful on the assumption that the reticular nucleus provides tonic inhibition across the entire thalamus.

5) Is NMDA/AMPA ratio constant across areas and is this another difference between mice and monkeys? I am aware of early work in the mouse (Myme et al., J. Neurophys., 2003) suggesting no changes at least in comparing two brain regions' layer 2/3, but has more work been performed related to this?

6) Are bilateral connections between the left and right sides of a given area omitted and could those be important?

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Combining dynamical modelling and recent findings of mouse brain anatomy, Ding et al. developed a cell-type-specific connectome-based dynamical model of the mouse brain underlying working memory. The authors find that there is a gradient across the cortex in terms of whether mnemonic information can be sustained persistently or only transiently, and this gradient is negatively correlated to the local density of parvalbumin (PV) positive inhibitory cells but positively correlated with mesoscale-defined cortical hierarchy. In addition, weighing connectivity strength by PV density at target areas provides a more faithful relationship between input strength and delay firing rate. The authors also investigate a model where cortical persistent activity can only be sustained with thalamus input intact, although this result is rather separate from the rest of the study. The authors then use this model to test the causal contributions of different areas to working memory. Although some of the in silico perturbations are consistent with existing experimental data, others are rather surprising and need to be further discussed. Finally, the authors investigate patterns of attractor states as a result of different local and long-range connections and suggest that distinct attractor states could underlie different task demands.

The importance of PV density as a predictor for working memory activity patterns in the mouse brain is in contrast to recent computational findings in the primate brain where the number of spines (excitatory synapses per pyramidal cell) is the key predictor. This finding reveals important species differences and provides complementary mechanisms that can shape distributed patterns of working memory representation across cortical regions. The method of biologically-based near-whole-brain dynamical modeling of a cognitive function is compelling, and the main conclusions are mostly well supported by evidence. However, some aspects of the method, result, and discussion need to be clarified and extended.

1. Based on existing anatomical data, the authors reveal a negative correlation between cortical hierarchy (defined by mesoscale connectivity; this concept needs to be explicitly defined in the Results session, not just in the Method section) and local PV density (Fig. 1). In the dynamical model, the authors find that working memory activity is positively (and strongly) correlated with cortical hierarchy and negatively (and less strongly) correlated with PV cell density (Fig. 2), and conclude that working memory activity depends on both. But could the negative correlation between activity and PV density simply result from the inherent relationship between hierarchy and PV density across regions? To strengthen this result, the authors should quantify the predictive power of local PV density on working memory activity beyond the predictive power of cortical hierarchy.

2. In Fig. 4, the authors find that cell-type-specific graph measures more accurately predict delay-period firing rates. Specifically, the authors weigh connections with a cell-type-projection coefficient, which is smaller when the PV cell fraction is higher in the target area. Considering that local PV cell fraction is already correlated with delay activity patterns, weighing the input with the same feature will naturally result in a better input-output relationship. This result will be strengthened if there is a more independent measure of cell-type-projection coefficient, such as the spine density of PV vs excitatory cells across regions, or even the percentage of inhibitory versus excitatory cells targeted by upstream region (even just for an example set of brain regions).

3. The authors aim to identify a core subnetwork that generates persistent activity across the cortex by characterising delay activity as well as the effects of perturbations during the stimulus and delay period. Consistent with existing data, the model identifies frontal areas and medial orbital areas as core areas. Surprisingly, areas such as the gustatory area are also part of the core areas. These more nuanced predictions from the model should be further discussed. Also surprisingly, the secondary motor cortex (MOs), which has been indicated as a core area for short-term memory and motor planning by many existing studies is classified as a readout area. The authors explain this potential discrepancy as a difference in task demand. The task used in this study is a visual delayed response task, and the task(s) used to support the role of MOs in short-term memory is usually a whisker-based delayed response task or an auditory delay response task. In all these tasks, activity in the delay period is likely a mixture of sensory memory, decision, and motor preparation signals. Therefore, task demand is unlikely the reason for this discrepancy. On the other hand, motor effectors (saccade, lick, reach, orient) could be a potential reason why some areas are recruited as part of the core working-memory network in one task and not in another task. The authors should further discuss both of these points.

4. As a non-expert in the field, it is rather difficult to grasp the relationship between the results in Fig. 7 and the rest of the paper. Are all the attractor states related to working memory? If so, why are the core regions for different attractor states so different? And are the core regions identified in Fig. 5 based on arbitrary parameters that happen to identify certain areas as core (PL)? The authors should at least further clarify the method used and discuss these results in the context of previous results in this study.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, Yadav and colleagues explore the metabolic changes associated with the regeneration of mechanosensory neurons in O-GlcNAc transferase (ogt-1) mutant worms. Using in vivo laser axotomy to assess the regeneration of individual mechanosensory neurons in C elegans, the authors discovered increased regeneration in ogt-1 mutant worms diverts enhanced glycolysis towards one-carbon metabolism and the downstream transsulfuration metabolic pathway. By genetically and pharmacologically disrupting one-carbon metabolism, they were able to abrogate this phenotype. Similar results were obtained by targeting the serine synthesis pathway. Furthermore, the authors tested downstream targets of this pathway and discovered that the vitamin B12 independent shunt pathway confers regeneration competence in these neurons. They also included RNA-Seq data to support the same conclusion. Ogt-1 mutants showed profound transcriptional changes in genes related to glycolysis and one-carbon metabolism. Perhaps more excitingly, supplementation of the methioninine in wild-type worms is sufficient to recapitulate the regenerative phenotype found in ogt-1 mutants.

I found these results convincing and novel. The experimental approach is elegant and the conclusions are robust. The supplemental data support the major points of the paper. The identification of specific metabolic pathways associated with axon growth and regeneration represents a significant contribution to the Neuroscience field. Interrogation of these data sets and pathways will certainly spark new exciting research in the years to come.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

This is a potentially important finding regarding the roles of O-GlcNAc cycling and one-carbon metabolism in nerve regeneration. In a previous paper (Taub et al. 2018) they showed that both ogt-1 and oga-1 mutants show strong activation of a neuronal regeneration phenotype. However, the different biological processes used for the neural regeneration phenotype differed between the ogt-1 and oga-1 mutants. Several small issues emerge in the present paper which will increase the interest in the findings presented.

In summary, this paper under review is a potentially important finding which upon further documentation will be an excellent contribution.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Chaoming Wang and coauthors present a new framework for modeling neurons and networks of neurons, spanning a wide range of possible models from detailed (point-neuron) models with non-linear ion channel dynamics to more abstract rate neuron models. Models are defined in an object-oriented style, familiar to users of machine-learning frameworks like PyTorch, and are efficiently executed via the just-in-time compilation framework JAX/XLA. The programming paradigm naturally supports a hierarchical style, where e.g. a network is composed of neurons that contains ion channels; each of these components can be reused in different contexts and be simulated/analyzed individually.

Strengths:<br /> Brainpy's approach is an innovative application of state-of-the-art technology widely used in the machine learning community (auto-differentation, just-in-time compilation) to modeling in computational neuroscience and could provide a useful bridge between the two domains which overlap more and more. For researchers, describing, running, and optimizing their models in Python is very convenient. The use of Numba to write efficient operators for JAX/XLA is innovative and potentially very powerful.

The modeling framework is very flexible, where most types of models commonly used in computational neuroscience can be readily expressed.

The framework supports various integration algorithms for ODEs, SDEs, and FDEs, several additional convenience tools for model training, optimization, and analysis, as well as many pre-defined ion-channel, neuron, and synapse models. The wide range of included simulation and analysis tools and pre-defined models is impressive, and exceeds those offered by most competing software. The software comes with extensive documentation, tutorials, and examples, on par with that of existing simulators that have been around for much longer.

Weaknesses:<br /> While the article clearly outlines the strengths of the chosen approach, it lacks an equally clear exposition of its limitations and a more thorough comparison to established approaches. Two examples of limitations that should be stated more clearly, in my opinion: models need to be small enough to fit on a single machine (in contrast to e.g. NEURON and NEST which support distributed computation via MPI), and only single-compartment models are supported; both limitations are mentioned in passing in the discussion, but would merit a more upfront mention. Regarding the comparison to other approaches/simulators:<br /> 1) The study does not verify the accuracy of the presented framework. While its basic approach (time-step-based simulation, standard numerical integration algorithms) is sufficiently similar to other software to not expect major discrepancies, an explicit comparison would remove any doubt. Quantitative measures of accuracies are particularly important in the context of benchmarks (see below), since simulations can be made arbitrarily fast by sacrificing performance.<br /> 2) Benchmarking against other software is obviously important, but also full of potential pitfalls. The current article does not state clearly whether the results are strictly comparable. In particular: are the benchmarks on the different simulators calculating results to the same accuracy (use of single or double precision, same integration algorithm, etc.)? Does each simulator use the fastest possible execution mode (e.g. number of threads/processes for NEST, C++ standalone mode in Brian2, etc.)? What is exactly measured (compilation time, network generation time, simulation execution time, ...) - these components will scale differently with network size and simulation duration, so summing them up makes the results difficult to interpret. Details are also missing for the comparison between the XLA operator customization in C++ vs. Python: was the C++ variant written by the authors or by someone else? Does the NUMBA→XLA mechanism also support GPUs/TPUs? This comparison also seems to be missing from the GitHub repository provided for reproducing the paper results.<br /> 3) While the authors convincingly argue for the merits of their Python-based/object-oriented approach, in my opinion, they do not fully acknowledge the advantages of domain-specific languages (NMODL, NestML, equation syntax of ANNarchy and Brian2, ...). In particular, such languages aim at a strong decoupling of the mathematical model description from its implementation and other parts of the model. In contrast, models described with BrainPy's approach often need to refer to such details, e.g. be aware of differences between dense and sparse connectivity schemes, online, or batch mode, etc. It might also be worth mentioning descriptive approaches to synaptic connectivity as supported by other simulators (connection syntax in Brian2, Connection Set Algebra for NEST).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

This manuscript introduces an integrative framework for modelling and analysis in neuroscience called BrainPy. It describes the many tools and utilities for building a wide range of models with an accessible and extensible unified interface written in Python. Several illustrative examples are provided for common use cases, including how to extend the existing classes to incorporate new features, demonstrating its ease of use and adherence to Python's programming conventions for integrative modelling across multiple scales and paradigms. The provided benchmarks also demonstrate that despite the convenience of presenting a high-level interpreted language to the user, it provides orders of magnitude of computational speed-up relative to three popular alternative frameworks on the chosen simulations through the extensive use of several Just In Time compilers. Computational benchmarks are also provided to illustrate the speed-up gained from running the models on massively parallel processing hardware, including GPUs, suggesting leading computational performance across a wide range of use cases.

While the results presented are impressive, publishing further details of the benchmarks in an appendix would be helpful for evaluating the claims and the overall conclusion would be more convincing if the performance benefits were demonstrated on a wider selection of test cases. Unsatisfyingly, the authors gave up on making a direct comparison to Brian running on GPUs with GeNN which would have been a fairer comparison than CPU-based simulations. The code for the chosen benchmarks is also likely to be highly optimised by the authors for running on BrainPy but less so for the other platforms - a fairer test would be to invite the authors of the other simulators to optimise the same models and re-evaluate the benchmarks. Furthermore, the manuscript reads like an advertisement for the platform with very little discussion of its limitations, weaknesses, or directions for further improvement. A more frank and balanced perspective would strengthen the manuscript and give the reader greater confidence in the platform.

Since simulators wax and wane in popularity, it would be reassuring to see a roadmap for development with a proposed release cadence and a sustainable governance policy for the project. This would serve to both clearly indicate the areas of active development where community contributions would be most valuable and also to reassure potential users that the project is unlikely to be abandoned in the near future, ensuring that their time investment in learning to use the framework will not be wasted. Similarly, a complex set of dependencies, which need to be modified for BrainPy, will likely make the project hard to maintain and so a similar plan to those given for the CI pipeline and documentation generation for automation of these modifications would be a good addition. It is also important to periodically reflect on whether it still makes sense to combine all the disparate tools into one framework as the codebase grows and starts to strain under modifications required to maintain its unification.

Finally, a live demonstration would be a very useful addition to the project. For example, a Jupyter notebook hosted on mybinder.org or similar, and a fully configured Docker image, would each enable potential users to quickly experiment with BrainPy without having to install a stack of dependencies and troubleshoot version conflicts with their pre-existing setup. This would greatly lower the barrier to adoption and help to convince a larger base of modellers of the potential merits of BrainPy, which could be major, both in terms of the computational speed-up and ease of development for a wide range of modelling paradigms.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

The paper presents the novel neuro-simulator BrainPy, which introduces several new concepts compared to existing simulators such as NEST, Brian, or GeNN: 1) a modular and Pythonic interface, which avoids having to use a fixed set of neural/synaptic models or using a textual equation-oriented interface; 2) a common platform for simulation, training, and analysis; 3) the use of just-in-time compilation using JAX/XLA, allowing to transparently access CPU, GPU, and TPU platforms. While none of these features is new per se (apart from TPU support, as far as I know), their combination provides an interesting new direction for the design of neuro-simulators.

Overall, BrainPy is a nice and valuable addition to the already overwhelming list of neuro-simulators, which all have their own advantages and drawbacks and are diversely maintained. The main strengths of BrainPy are 1) its multi-scale modular interface and 2) the possibility for the user to transparently use various hardware platforms for the simulation. The paper succeeds in explaining those two aspects in a convincing manner. The paper is also very didactic in explaining the different strengths and weaknesses of the current simulators, as well as the benefits of JIT compilation.

One potential issue is that the scope of the neuro-simulator is not very clearly explained and the target audience is not well defined: is BrainPy primarily intended for computational neuroscientists or for neuro-AI practitioners? The simulator offers very detailed neural models (HH, fractional order models), classical point-models (LIF, AdEx), rate-coded models (reservoirs), but also deep learning layers (Conv, MaxPool, BatchNorm, LSTM). Is there an advantage to using BrainPy rather than PyTorch for purely deep networks? Is it possible to build hybrid models combining rate-coded reservoirs or convnets with a network of HH neurons? Without such a hybrid approach, it is unclear why the deep learning layers are needed. In terms of plasticity, only external training procedures are implemented (backpropagation, FORCE, surrogate gradients). No local plasticity mechanism (Hebbian learning for rate-coded networks, STDP and its variants for spiking networks) seems to be implemented, apart from STP. Is it a planned feature? Appendix 8 refers to `bp.synplast.STDP()`, but it is not present in the current code (https://github.com/brainpy/BrainPy/tree/master/brainpy/_src/dyn/synplast). Spiking networks without STDP are not going to be very useful to computational neuroscientists, so this suggests that the simulator targets primarily neuro-AI, i.e. AI researchers interested in using spiking models in a machine learning approach. However, it is unclear why they would be interested in HH or Morris-Lecar models rather than simpler LIF neurons.

A second weakness of the paper concerns the demos and benchmarks used to demonstrate the versatility and performance of BrainPy, which are not sufficiently described. In Fig. 4, it is for example not explained how the reservoirs are trained (only the readout weights, or also the recurrent ones? Using BPTT only makes sense when the recurrent weights are also trained.), nor how many neurons they have, what the final performance is, etc. The comparison with NEURON, NEST, and Brian2 is hard to trust without detailed explanations. Why are different numbers of neurons used for COBA and COBAHH? How long is the simulation in each setting? Which time is measured: the total time including compilation and network creation, or just the simulation time? Are the same numerical methods used for all simulators? It would also be interesting to discuss why the only result involving TPUs (Fig 8c) shows that it is worse than the V100 GPU. What could be the reason? Are there biologically-realistic networks that would benefit from a TPU? As the support for TPUs is a major selling point of BrainPy, it would be important to investigate its usage further.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Due complicated and often unpredictable idiosyncratic differences, comparing fMRI topography between subjects typically would require extra expensive scan time and extra laborious analyzing steps to examine with specific functional localizer scan runs that contrast fMRI responses of every subject to different stimulus categories. To overcome this challenge, hyperaligning tools have recently been developed (e.g., Guntupalli et al., 2016; Haxby et al., 2011) based on aligning in a high-dimensional space of voxels of subjects' fMRI responses to watching a given movie. In the present study, Jiahui and colleagues propose a significantly improved version of hyperaligning functional brain topography between individuals. This new version, based on fMRI connectivity, works robustly on datasets when subjects watched different movies and were scanned with different parameters/scanners at different MRI centers.

Robustness is the major strength of this study. Despite the fact that datasets from different subjects watching different movies at different MRI centers with different scan parameters were used, the results of functional brain topography from between-subject hyperalignment based on fMRI connectivity were comparable to the golden standard of within-subject functional localizations, and significantly better than regular surface anatomical alignments. These results also support the claim that the present approach is a useful improvement from previous hyperalignments based on time-locked fMRI voxel responses, which would require normative samples of subjects watching a same movie.

Given the robustness, this new version of hyperalignment would provide much stronger statistical power for group-level comparisons with less costs of time and efforts to collect and analyze data from large sample size according to the current stringent standard, likely being useful to the whole research community of functional neuroimaging. That said, more discussions of the limit of the present hyperalignment approach would be helpful to potential readers. For example, to what extend the present hyperalignment approach would be applicable to individuals with atypical functional brain topography such as brain lesion patients with e.g., acquired prosopagnosia? Even in typical populations, while bilateral fusiform face areas can be identified in the majority through functional localizer scans, the left fusiform face area sometimes cannot be found. Moreover, many top-down factors are known to modulate functional brain topography. Due to these factors, brain responses and functional connectivity may be different even when a same subject watched a same movie twice (e.g., Cui et al., 2021).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Guo and her colleagues develop a new approach to map the category-selective functional topographies in individual participants based on their movie-viewing fMRI data and functional localizer data from a normative sample. The connectivity hyperalignment are used to derived the transformation matrices between the participants according to their functional connectomes during movies watching. The transformation matrices are then used to project the localizer data from the normative sample into the new participant and create the idiosyncratic cortical topography for the participant. The authors demonstrate that a target participant's individualized category-selective topography can be accurately estimated using connectivity hyperalignment, regardless of whether different movies are used to calculate the connectome and regardless of other data collection parameters. The new approach allows researchers to estimate a broad range of functional topographies based on naturalistic movies and a normative database, making it possible to integrate datasets from laboratories worldwide to map functional areas for individuals. The topic is of broad interest for neuroimaging community; the rationale of the study is straightforward and the experiments were well designed; the results are comprehensive. I have some concerns that the authors may want to address, particularly on the details of the pipeline used to map individual category-selective functional topographies.

1. How does the length of the scan-length of movie-viewing fMRI affect the accuracy in predicting the idiosyncratic cortical topography? Similarly, how does the number of participants in the normative database affect the prediction of the category-selective topography? This information is important for the researchers who are interested in using the approach in their studies.<br /> 2. The data show that category-selective topography can be accurately estimated using connectivity hyperalignment, regardless of whether different movies are used to calculate the connectome and regardless of other data collection parameters. I'm wondering whether the functional connectome from resting state fMRI can do the same job as the movie-watching fMRI. If it is yes, it will expand the approach to broader data.<br /> 3. The authors averaged the hyper-aligned functional localizer data from all of subjects to predict individual category-selective topographies. As there are large spatial variability in the functional areas across subjects, averaging the data from many subjects may blur boundaries of the functional areas. A better solution might be to average those subjects who show highly similar connectome to the target subjects.<br /> 4. It is good to see that predictions made with hyperalignment were close to and sometimes even exceeded the reliability values measured by Cronbach's alpha. But, please clarify how the Cronbach's alpha is calculated.<br /> 5. Which algorithm was used to perform surface-based anatomical alignment? Can the state-of-the-art Multimodal Surface Matching (MSM) algorithm from HCP achieve better performance?<br /> 6. Is it necessary to project to the time course of the functional localizer from the normative sample into the new participants? Does it work if we just project the contrast maps from the normative samples to the new subjects?<br /> 7. Saygin and her colleagues have demonstrated that structural connectivity fingerprints can predict cortical selectivity for multiple visual categories across cortex (Osher DE et al, 2016, Cerebral Cortex; Saygin et al, 2011, Nat. Neurosci). I think there's a connection between those studies and the current study. If the author can discuss the connection between them, it may help us understand why CHA work so well.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this paper, Jiahui and colleagues propose a new method for learning individual-specific functional resonance imaging (fMRI) patterns from naturalistic stimuli, extending existing hyperalignment methods. They evaluate this method - enhanced connectivity hyperalignment (CHA) - across four datasets, each comprising between nine (Raiders) and twenty (Budapest, Sraiders) participants.

The work promises to address a significant need in existing functional alignment methods: while hyperalignment and related methods have been increasingly used in the field to compare participants scanned with overlapping stimuli (or lack thereof, in the case of resting state data), their use remains largely tied to naturalistic stimuli. In this case, having non-overlapping stimuli is a significant constraint on application, as many researchers may have access to only partially overlapping stimuli or wish to compare stimuli acquired under different protocols and at different sites.

It is surprising, however, that the authors do not cite a paper that has already successfully demonstrated a functional alignment method that can address exactly this need: a connectivity-based Shared Response Model (cSRM; Nastase et al., 2020, NeuroImage). It would be relevant for the authors to consider the cSRM method in relation to their enhanced CHA method in detail. In particular, both the relative predictive performance as well as associated computational costs would be useful for researchers to understand in considering enhanced CHA for their applications.

With this in mind, I noted several current weaknesses in the paper:

First, while the enhanced CHA method is a promising update on existing CHA techniques, it is unclear why this particular six step, iterative approach was adopted. That is: why was six steps chosen over any other number? At present, it is not clear if there is an explicit loss function that the authors are minimizing over their iterations. The relative computational cost of six iterations is also likely significant, particularly compared to previous hyperalignment algorithms. A more detailed theoretical understanding of why six iterations are necessary-or if other researchers could adopt a variable number according to the characteristics of their data-would significantly improve the transferability of this method.

Second, the existing evaluations for enhanced CHA appear to be entirely based on image-derived correlations. That is, the authors compare the predicted image from CHA with the ground-truth image using correlation. While this provides promising initial evidence, correlation-based measures are often difficult to interpret given their sensitivity to image characteristics such as smoothness. Including Cronbach's alpha reliability as a baseline does not address this concern, as it is similarly an image-based statistic. It would be useful to see additional predictive experiments using frameworks such as time-segment classification, inter-subject decoding, or encoding models.

Addressing these concerns and considering cSRM as a comparison model would significantly strengthen the paper. There are also notable strengths that I would encourage the authors to further pursue. In particular, the authors have access to a unique dataset in which the same Raiders of the Lost Ark stimulus was scanned for participants within the Budapest (SRaiders) dataset as well as non-overlapping participants in the Raiders dataset. Exploring the relative performance for cross-movie prediction within a dataset as compared to a shared movie prediction across datasets is particularly interesting for methods development. I would encourage the authors to explicitly report results in this framework to highlight both this unique testing structure as well as the performance of their enhanced CHA method.

Overall, I share the authors' enthusiasm for the potential of cross-movie, cross-dataset prediction, and I believe that methods such as enhanced CHA are likely to significantly improve our ability to make these comparisons in the near future. At present, however, I find that the theoretical and experimental support for enhanced CHA is incomplete. It is therefore difficult to assess how enhanced CHA meets its goals or how successfully other researchers would be able to adopt this method in their own experiments.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Variants in the UBA5 gene are associated with rare developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, DEE44. This research developed a system to assess in vivo and in vitro genotype-phenotype relationships between UBA5 allele series by humanized UBA5 fly models and biochemical activity assays. This study provides a basis for evaluating current and future individuals afflicted with this rare disease.

Strengths:<br /> The authors developed a method to measure the enzymatic reaction activity of UBA5 mutants over time by applying the UbiReal method, which can monitor each reaction step of ubiquitination in real time using fluorescence polarization. They also classified fruit fly carrying humanized UBA5 variants into groups based on phenotype. They found a correlation between biochemical UBA5 activity and phenotype severity.

Weaknesses:<br /> In the case of human DEE44, compound heterozygotes with both loss-of-function and hypomorphic forms (e.g., p.Ala371Thr, p.Asp389Gly, p.Asp389Tyr) may cause disease states. The presented models have failed to evaluate such cases.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this study, the authors generate a Drosophila model to assess disease-linked allelic variants in the UBA5 gene. In humans, variants in UBA5 have been associated with DEE44, characterized by developmental delay, seizures, and encephalopathy. Here, the authors set out to characterize the relationship between 12 disease-linked variants in UBA5 using a variety of assays in their Drosophila Uba5 model. They first show that human UBA5 can substitute all essential functions of the Drosophila Uba5 ortholog, and then assess phenotypes in flies expressing the various disease variants. Using these assays, the authors classify the alleles into mild, intermediate, and severe loss-of-function alleles. Further, the authors establish several important in vitro assays to determine the impacts of the disease alleles on Uba5 stability and function. Together, they find a relatively close correlation between in vivo and in vitro relationships between Uba5 alleles and establish a new Drosophila model to probe the etiology of Uba5-related disorders.

Strengths:<br /> Overall, this is a convincing and well-executed study. There is clearly a need to assess disease-associated allelic variants to better understand human disorders, particularly for rare diseases, and this humanized fly model of Uba5 is a powerful system to rapidly evaluate variants and relationships to various phenotypes. The manuscript is well written, and the experiments are appropriately controlled.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Relative simplicity and genetic accessibility of the fly brain makes it a premier model system for studying the function of genes linked to various diseases in humans. Here, Pan et al. show that human UBA5, whose mutations cause developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, can functionally replace the fly homolog Uba5. The authors then systematically express in flies the different versions of the gene carrying clinically relevant SNPs and perform extensive phenotypic characterization such as survival rate, developmental timing, lifespan, locomotor and seizure activity, as well as in vitro biochemical characterization (stability, ATP binding, UFM-1 activation) of the corresponding recombinant proteins. The biochemical effects are well predicted by (or at least consistent with) the location of affected amino acids in the previously described Uba5 protein structure. Most strikingly, the severity of biochemical defects appears to closely track the severity of phenotypic defects observed in vivo in flies. While the paper does not provide many novel insights into the function of Uba5, it convincingly establishes the fly nervous system as a powerful model for future mechanistic studies.

One potential limitation is the design of the expression system in this work. Even though the authors state (ln. 127-128) that "human cDNA is expressed under the control of the endogenous Uba5 enhancer and promoter", it is in fact the Gal4 gene that is expressed from the endogenous locus (which authors also note in the same paragraph 138-139), meaning that the cDNA expression level would inevitably be amplified in comparison. While I do not think this weakens the conclusions of this paper, it may impact the interpretation of future experiments that use these tools. Especially considering the authors argue that most disease variants of UBA5 are partial loss-of-functions, the amplification effect could potentially mask the phenotypes of milder hypomorphic alleles. Temperature sensitivity of Gal4 expression may allow calibrating levels to reduce the impact of this amplification, but the revised manuscript still does not openly acknowledge or discuss this potential caveat.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The revised manuscript new presented 1) a permutation-based test for the significance of the overlap between DEGs and genes with positive selection signals in Tibetans, and 2) polygenic adaptation test for the eQTLs. I make my suggestions in detail as below:

Major Comments

1. My previous concern regarding the DEG analysis remains unresolved. Although the authors agreed in their response that the difference between the male- and female-specific DEGs are insufficient to the difference between sex-combined and sex-specific DEGs (Figure S6). However, the results section still states the opposite pattern between males and females as a decisive reason for the difference (p. 9, lines 236-239). Again, I would like to recommend the authors to test alternative ways of analysis to boost statistical power for DEG detection other than simply splitting data into males and females and performing analysis in each subset. For example, the authors may consider utilizing gene by environment interaction analysis schemes here biological sex as an environmental factor.

2. Multiple testing schemes are still sub-optimal in some cases. Most of all, the p-values in the WGCNA analysis (p. 11), the authors corrected for the number of traits (n=12) after adjusting for the correlation between them. However, they did not mention whether they counted for the number of modules they tested at all (n=136 and 161 for males and females, respectively). Whether they account for the number of modules will make a substantial difference in the significance threshold, please incorporate and describe a proper multiple testing scheme for this analysis.

3. Evidence for natural selection on the observed DEG pattern is still weak and not properly described.<br /> 1) For the overlap between DEGs and TSNGs, the authors introduced a permutation-based test, but used a total set of genes in the human genome as a comparison set (p. 25, lines 699-700). I believe that the authors should sample random sets of genes from those already expressed in each tissue to make a fair comparison.<br /> 2) The entire polygraph analysis for polygenic adaptation is poorly described. The current version of the Methods does not clarify i) for which genes the eQTLs are discovered, 2) how the authors performed the eQTL analysis, iii) how the authors polarized the effect, and iv) how they set up a comparison between the eQTLs and the others.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

More than 80 million people live at high altitude. This impacts health outcomes, including those related to pregnancy. Longer-lived populations at high altitudes, such as the Tibetan and Andean populations show partial protection against the negative health effects of high altitude. The paper by Yue sought to determine the mechanisms by which the placenta of Tibetans may have adapted to minimise the negative effect of high altitude on fetal growth outcomes. It compared placentas from pregnancies from Tibetans to those from the Han Chinese. It employed RNAseq profiling of different regions of the placenta and fetal membranes, with some follow-up of histological changes in umbilical cord structure and placental structure. The study also explored the contribution of fetal sex in these phenotypic outcomes.

A key strength of the study is the large sample sizes for the RNAseq analysis, the analysis of different parts of the placenta and fetal membranes, and the assessment of fetal sex differences.

A main weakness is that this study, and its conclusions, largely rely on transcriptomic changes informed by RNAseq. Changes in genes and pathways identified through bioinformatic analysis were not verified by alternate methods, such as by western blotting, which would add weight to the strength of the data and its interpretations. There is also a lack of description of patient characteristics, so the reader is unable to make their own judgments on how placental changes may link to pregnancy outcomes. Another weakness is that the histological analyses were performed on n=5 per group and were rudimentary in nature.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Impairment in hand function is a challenge for stroke rehabilitation, and its neural underpinnings are of paramount importance for the field of biomedical science and neuroscience. The present study uses a novel finger force measurement device to measure individual fingers' force production in three dimensions when one finger is needed to produce an independent isometric force. Enslavement, i.e., the unwanted coactivation of non-intended fingers, is exaggerated in stroke survivors. The study started out by noting that the contribution of underlying factors (the loss of corticospinal drive, intrusion of flexor synergy due to a loss of regulation on subcortical pathways, and/or biomechanical changes) is not well understood. Detailed analysis for the inter-dependence between finger forces shows that the covariation between finger forces showed stroke-specific changes in shape and magnitudes, and these changes are not caused by biomechanical constraints. The important message that the study tries to convey is that the magnitude change in finger coactivation of the paretic hand is caused by the two dissociable factors, i.e., a loss of complexity in finger control and an intrusion of flexor bias. 

Strengths:<br /> The targeted topic of individual control of fingers for stroke survivors is of both theoretical and applied importance. The methodology of using isometric finger force to fulfill simple yet relevant motor tasks for stroke patients is also novel and sound. The paper is concisely written with excellent figures.

Weaknesses:<br /> I have three major concerns about the study: 1) the link between the analysis results and two of the study's main conclusions is weak, specifically for the conclusion that a loss of complexity in finger control and the intrusion of flexor bias is dissociable. 2) using hand posture measures to quantify the influence of biomechanical factors in stroke patients is not well justified. 3) only a limited number of stroke patients were recruited (n=13). <br /> <br /> First, the conclusion that the two factors contributing to the magnitude of finger covariation pattern are dissociable is not well reasoned. For example, the reasoning is clearly stated (Line 434) as: "Given the above converging evidence that Angular Distance is a measure of complexity of the geometric shape of finger coactivation, whereas Euclidean Distance is more sensitive to the magnitude change of these patterns across task goals if the two factors are dissociable, the intrusion of flexor bias would predict the magnitude (Euclidean Distances), but not the shape (Angular Distances) of the enslavement patterns. "

The logic behind this statement is unclear. Suppose the "two factors" are the complexity loss (shown by Angular Distance) and intrusion of flexor bias (shown by Bias). In that case, we cannot just use the predictability and the lack of predictability of the measure of intrusion of flexor bias (Bias) to reach the above conclusion, i.e., the Bias (for the intrusion of flexor bias) and changes in Angular Distance (for the loss of complex loss) is dissociable. Why not just test the association between Bias and Angular Distance directly?

Another conclusion is that the changes of Euclidian Distance and Angular Distance from the pattern similarity analysis of finger coactivation patterns inform us that the coactivation shape is preserved but its magnitude is increased in the paretic hand. However, the shape measure (Angular Distance) shows a decrease in paretic hands, indicating the coactivations for different task requirements become similar in the paretic hand. It becomes similar across task conditions, but this does not mean the coactivation shape for each task requirement is preserved in patients. In fact, one possible sign of reservation might be an unchanged function of distance measure (varied by intended fingers or directions) between groups (ideally shown in the format as Figure 5B). As we can see from the figure, the shape is preserved in the mild group but not so in the severe group if we compare the data between groups. Statistically, it is better to do ANOVA and use the group*fingers and group*directions interaction to show the reservation of "shape." The same logic applies to the Euclidean Distance measure (Figure 7B and 7D). Again, the connection between data analysis results and conclusions should be clarified. <br /> <br /> Second, the use of hand posture measures to quantify biomechanical factors for hand impairments is not validated.  

Based on two hand posture measures, the study rules out the contribution of biomechanical factors for enslavement in patients entirely (Line 390). However, the alternative explanation for the negative effect of posture variables is that these two specific variables (Mount Distance and Angle) might not reflect the postural changes (and biomechanical factors in hand function) in patients. Note these two measures are not about the resting hand posture of the patient, which is often affected. It is the posture when the hand is inserted into the apparatus, and the total force readings are minimal. The force readings would be quite small if people are good at relaxing their muscles and inhibiting unwanted reflexes in a specific posture. Healthy hands can remain a small force for rather different postures. Thus, healthy hands can produce a range of possible minimum-force postures, making the reliability of these "minimum" posture measures questionable. For patients, on the other hand, since a minimum-force posture is related to the ability to relax the muscles, it probably reflects both biomechanical changes (muscles and tendons, etc.) and subcortical influence. Thus, using these two measures to rule out the possibility of biomechanical factors needs further justification. <br /> <br /> Third, the number of stroke patients is limited (n=13), especially when one important test is to compare the mild group and the moderate-severe subgroups. The group comparison thus has small statistical power with a medium split. <br /> <br /> As the study aims to tease out the contributions of biomechanical, subcortical, and cortical input to the observed impairment of enslavement, we need to be careful about whether the selected behavioral variables are justified to reflect these factors and whether the data analysis results coherently support the conclusions. As it currently stands, the paper still has room to improve to achieve its aims.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This study addresses the factors affecting the loss of independent control of finger forces after stroke. As central and peripheral factors contribute to this impairment, the authors used a novel apparatus and task to rigorously quantify the specific features of loss of finger individuation across all digits. The analyses ruled out the role of biomechanical constraints and revealed that the loss of independent control of finger forces is primarily driven by the interaction of two factors: loss of complexity in finger control (shape of enslavement patterns) and involuntary coactivations of task-irrelevant fingers (flexion bias).

Strengths:<br /> 1. The device and 3D finger individuation task are major strengths of the study, setting this work apart from previous work and enabling novel insights.<br /> 2. The analyses are thorough and well-designed. Of particular value is the analysis of finger force control in 3D Cartesian space and the use of Representational Similarity Analysis of finger enslavement pattern magnitude and shape.<br /> 3. A major contribution of this work is the teasing out of the effects of top-down factors versus biomechanical constraints affecting impairment of finger force control.<br /> 4. I found the discussion about complexity of finger control (lines 541-553) very interesting. The topic of adaptability of finger coactivation patterns in the context of dexterous manipulation is a key topic in robotics and neuroscience. In robotics, finger forces are decomposed into a grasp and manipulation component. In human motor control studies, this approach has identified their temporal coordination (work by Latash and Zatsiorsky, e.g., Gao et al., 2005) and potentially distinct sensorimotor control mechanisms (Wu and Santello, 2023). The authors might wish to discuss how coactivation patterns might contribute to the coordination of grasp and manipulation forces.

Weaknesses:<br /> None (only minor clarifications, e.g., the term biomechanical constraints should be defined earlier in the paper).

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This paper seeks to characterize finger enslavement impairment after stroke-"the unwanted coactivation of non-intended fingers in individuated finger movements." In the past, three possible neuromuscular mechanisms contributing to finger enslavement were suggested: passive musculotendon properties, an intrusion of flexor bias, and a loss of complexity in finger control repertoire. To tease apart these factors, the authors simultaneously recorded all five fingertip forces using a sensitive isometric force measurement device, which allowed characterizing patterns of enslavement for all fingers in a variety of instructed tasks. This novel experimental design opened new opportunities to study finger enslavement in more detail. To analyze this multi-dimensional dataset, new metrics were introduced, and many detailed analyses were conducted. Here is a brief account of the important results as best as I can summarize them.

1. Gross finger individuation ability is lower in the paretic hand of stroke patients than in non-paretic or healthy hands. Enslavement worsens with the severity of overall stroke impairment.<br /> 2. The enslavement patterns - unintended finger forces as functions of an instructed force in a different finger - show smaller "complexity" in paretic than nonparetic hands. I.e., the directions of unintended finger forces in the paretic hand remain similar across various instructed tasks. This reduced complexity also correlates with the severity of stroke.<br /> 3. The enslavement patterns show larger magnitude differences in the paretic than non-paretic hands; i.e., the unintended fingers' forces show a larger shift when comparing two instructed force directions in a paretic finger.<br /> 4. Finger force biases exist in paretic and non-paretic hands and correlate with the severity of stroke. Biases are more pronounced in flexion than ab/adduction direction.<br /> 5. The resting hand posture does not correlate with finger force bias or enslavement patterns.<br /> 6. Finger force biases correlate with enslavement patterns in the paretic hand, but not in the non-paretic hand.<br /> 7. Flexor bias (force biases in flexor direction) does not correlate with gross individuation ability in the ab/adduction direction in the non-paretic hand, but it correlates with the ab/adduction individuation ability in the paretic hand.<br /> 8. Finger force biases do not correlate with directional differences in enslavement patterns on either hand. However, biases correlate with the magnitude of force shift in the enslavement pattern.<br /> 9. The intrusion of flexor bias (difference of finger force biases in paretic and non-paretic hands) does not correlate with directional differences in enslavement patterns in either hand, but it correlates with force shifts in enslavement patterns in both hands.<br /> 10. More principal components (in principal component analysis, PCA) are required to explain similar levels of variance of enslavement patterns in paretic than non-paretic hands.

Taken together, the authors use these results to claim that: 1) enslavement impairment is unrelated to passive biomechanical properties, and 2) loss of complexity and flexor bias both contribute to enslavement, but possibly via different mechanisms.

The first argument is supported by the result that resting hand posture does not explain gross individuation ability or enslavement patterns. Although these results are valid, biomechanical contributions are not ruled out altogether in my opinion. The experiment starts from the optimal posture in which minimal finger forces are recorded in a relaxed state, essentially an "equilibrium" posture where all forces from muscles, ligaments, and other soft tissues are balanced. However, this equilibrium posture alone does not represent potential asymmetry in passive biomechanical properties (e.g., at equilibrium, flexion may face less stiffness than extension), nor does it take into account complex interactions between muscles of the hand. A simple finger force requires the co-activation of several intrinsic and extrinsic hand muscles as well as those of the wrist, some of which may be weak, shortened, stiff, painful, etc. Even if neural activity is present, compensation from other muscles may be needed, which may lead to unintended forces in other fingers. Although my "hunch" agrees with the author's claim that neural contributions outweigh biomechanical factors in enslavement, I believe resting posture on its own cannot account for "all" biomechanical factors. Additionally, the results comparing biases in paretic and non-paretic hands (line 389) are unrelated to biomechanics. It is reasonable to believe that the passive biomechanical properties of the paretic hand are different from those of the non-paretic hand if long enough time has passed since the stroke. So biomechanical of one hand is not representative of the other hand. Even if biases in the non-paretic hand could explain those in the paretic hand, I find it hard to extend the conclusion that biomechanics is a factor.

The authors further presented detailed analyses to tease apart contributions of flexor bias and loss of complexity to enslavement. The flexor bias is straightforward to define, and its correlation with enslavement (or the absence of correlation in the non-paretic hand) is supported by the results. However, the arguments about complexity are less straightforward. Two separate definitions of complexity are used: one is the directional differences between enslavement patterns, and the other is based on the number of principal components. This is one source of confusion as to which definition is used when referring to "loss of complexity". Nonetheless, both complexities are shown to decrease with the severity of stroke. The first type of complexity is also shown to be uncorrelated to flexor bias. However, I did not find evidence among the results that directly linked complexity to enslavement. Could complexity, similar to biomechanical properties, be ruled out? This paper provides no evidence for or against the contribution of complexity to enslavement.

My last point is about the neural correlates of these characteristics. The authors frequently use the terms "low-level", "subcortical", "top-down cortical", etc. throughout the paper, while the results are exclusively at a behavioral level. This issue is also present in the abstract where the authors state that: "we aim to tease apart the contributions of lower biomechanical, subcortical constraints, and top-down cortical control to these patterns in both healthy and stroke hands"; however, the methods and the results are unrelated to neural aspects of control, and the authors only refer to other studied to link these behavioral effects to "potential" neural causes. Further, the intrusion of flexor bias is usually associated with "subcortical" neural pathways in Results. The authors have properly discussed these possible neural correlates in the Discussion, but mentioning these terms in the Results is unjustified and unsupported by the results or the methods. This paper does not provide any standalone evidence to directly link complexity or bias to their neural correlates.

Comments on the representational distance matrices (RDM):<br /> Two types of RDM were defined: "by-Finger" RDM (Fig 4A), and "by-Target Direction" RDM (Fig 4D). While I understand the by-Finger RDM and it physically makes sense to me, I cannot fully wrap my head around the by-Target RDM. I leave the interpretation of these results to the reader.

The distinction between the Euclidean and Angular distance is also vague to me. Angular distance is a valid similarity measure for the directions of two vectors and it is unrelated to the norms of vectors. However, Euclidean distance is not fully independent of the Angular distance as the authors claim; it changes with both the norms of the two vectors and the angle between them. If the angular distance is small, then Euclidian distance mostly represents norm differences, but the statement "Euclidean distances are sensitive to the length difference between two force vectors but insensitive to direction differences" is not generally correct. This issue is particularly important because the averaging of distances (see my next point) masks details of individual distance values, which hinders the interpretation of the results.

The enslavement patterns and RDMs are potentially valuable metrics, however, the way they are condensed in the final statistical analyses reduces their value. The way I understand it, all elements of the RDM matrix are averaged into a single value. This averaging masks the details of individual pairs of comparisons, which not only reduces the information resolution but also seriously hinders rigorous analysis and interpretation of the results.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this study, the authors investigate the effects of Notch pathway inactivation on the termination of Drosophila neuroblasts at the end of development. They find that termination is delayed, while temporal patterning progression is slowed down. Forcing temporal patterning progression in a Notch pathway mutant restores correct timing of neuroblast elimination. Finally they show that Imp, an early temporal patterning factor promotes Delta expression in neuroblast lineages. This indicates that feedback loops between temporal patterning and lineage-intrinsic Notch activity fine tunes timing of early to late temporal transitions and is important to schedule NB termination at the end of development.

The study adds another layer of regulation that finetunes temporal progression in Drosophila neural stem cells. This mechanism appears to be mainly lineage intrinsic - Delta being expressed from NBs and their progeny, but also partly niche-mediated - Delta being also expressed in glia but with a minor influence. Together with a recent study (PMID: 36040415), this work suggests that Notch signaling is a key player in promoting temporal progression in various temporal patterning system. As such it is of broad interest for the neuro-developmental community.

Strengths<br /> The data are based on genetic experiments which are clearly described and mostly convincing. The study is interesting, adding another layer of regulation that finetunes temporal progression in Drosophila neural stem cells. This mechanism appears to be mainly lineage intrinsic - Delta being expressed from NBs and their progeny, but also partly niche-mediated - Delta being also expressed in glia but with a minor influence. A similar mechanism has been recently described, although in a different temporal patterning system (medulla neuroblasts of the optic lobe - PMID: 36040415). It is overall of broad interest for the neuro-developmental community.

Weaknesses<br /> The mechanisms by which Notch signaling regulates temporal patterning progression are not investigated in details. For example, it is not clear whether Notch signaling directly regulates temporal patterning genes, or whether the phenotypes observed are indirect (for example through the regulation of the cell-cycle speed). The authors could have investigated whether temporal patterning genes are directly regulated by the Notch pathway via ChIP-seq of Su(H) or the identification of potential binding sites for Su(H) in enhancers. A similar approach has been recently undertaken by the lab of Dr Xin Li, to show that Notch signaling regulates sequential expression of temporal patterning factors in optic lobes neuroblasts (PMID: 36040415), which exhibit a different temporal patterning system than central brain neuroblasts in the present study. As such, the mechanistic insights of the study are limited.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, the authors are building on their previous work showing Delta-Notch regulates the entrance and exit from embryo-larval quiescence of neural stem cells of the central brain (called CB neuroblasts (NB) (PMID: 35112131)). Here they show that continuous depletion of Notch in NBs from early embryogenesis leads to cycling NBs in the adult. This - cycling NBs in the adult - is not seen in controls. The assumption here is that these Notch-RNAi NBs in adults are those that did not undergo terminal differentiation in pupal development. The authors show that Notch is activated by its ligand Delta which is expressed on the GMC daughter cell and on cortex glia. They determine that the temporal requirement for Notch activity is 0-72 hours after larval hatching (ALH) (i.e., 1st instar through mid-3rd instar at 25C). In NBs/GMCs depleted for Notch, early temporal markers were still expressed at time points when they should be off and late markers were delayed in expression. These effects were observed in ~20-40% of NBs (Figures 5 and 6). Through mining existing data sets, they found that the early temporal factor Imp - an RNA binding protein - can bind Delta mRNA. They show that Delta transcripts decrease over time, leading to the hypothesis that Delta mRNA is repressed by the late temporal factors. Over-expressing late factors Syp or E93 earlier in development leads to downregulation of a Delta::GFP protein trap. These results lead to a model in which Notch regulates expression of early temporal factors and early temporal factors regulate Notch activity through translation of Delta mRNA.

There are several strengths of this study and no major weaknesses. The authors report rigorous measurements and statistical analyses throughout the study. Their conclusions are appropriate for the results. Data mining revealed an important mechanism - that Imp binds Delta mRNA - supporting the model that that early temporal factors promote Delta expression, which in turn promotes Notch signaling.

An appraisal: The authors use temperature shifts with Gal80TS to show that Notch is required between 0-72 hours ALH. They show with the use of known markers of the temporal factors and Delta protein trap, that Imp promotes Delta protein expression and the later temporal factors reduce Delta, although the molecular mechanisms are not clearly delineated. Overall, these data support their model that the reduction of Delta expression during larval development leads to a loss of Notch activity.

As noted in the Discussion, this study raises many questions about what Notch does in larval CB NBs. For example, does it inhibit Castor or Imp? Is Notch required in certain neural lineages and not others. These studies will be of interest in the community of developmental neurobiologists.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

As I indicated in the initial review, the experiments are well conceived and executed, and the data are clear. I also agree with the authors that this work represents a key first step toward understanding how Notch signaling contributes to temporal control of fly neuroblasts. It is my opinion that the authors fall short of demonstrating how Notch signaling and temporal identity genes at the chromatin levels. I find this disappointing given the availability of various tools for looking at dynamic regulation of gene activity at high resolution. Given these weaknesses, my opinion is that the study is descriptive and lacks mechanistic explanation.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The author studies a family of models for heritable epigenetic information, with a focus on enumerating and classifying different possible architectures. The key aspects of the paper are:

- Enumerate all 'heritable' architectures for up to 4 constituents.<br /> - A study of whether permanent ("genetic") or transient ("epigenetic") perturbations lead to heritable changes.<br /> - Enumerated the connectivity of the "sequence space" formed by these heritable architectures.<br /> - Incorporating stochasticity, the authors explore stability to noise (transient perturbations).<br /> - A connection is made with experimental results on C elegans.

The study is timely, as there has been a renewed interest in the last decade in non-genetic, heritable heterogeneity (e.g., from single-cell transcriptomics). Consequently, there is a need for a theoretical understanding of the constraints on such systems. There are some excellent aspects of this study: for instance:

- the attention paid to how one architecture "mutates" into another, establishing the analogue of a "sequence space" for network motifs (Fig 3).<br /> - the distinction is drawn between permanent ("genetic") and transient ("epigenetic") perturbations that can lead to heritable changes.<br /> - the interplay between development, generational timescales, and physiological time (as in Fig. 5).

The manuscript would be very interesting if it focused on explaining and expanding these results. Unfortunately, as a whole, it does not succeed in formalising nor addressing any particular open questions in the field. Aside from issues in presentation and modelling choices (detailed below), it would benefit greatly from a more systematic approach rather than the vignettes presented.

## Terminology<br /> The author introduces a terminology for networks of interacting species in terms of "entities" and "sensors" -- the former being nodes of a graph, and the latter being those nodes that receive inputs from other nodes. In the language of directed graphs, "entities" would seem to correspond to vertices, and "sensors" those vertices with positive indegree and outdegree. Unfortunately, the added benefit of redefining accepted terminology from the study of graphs and networks is not clear.

## Heritability<br /> The primary goal of the paper is to analyse the properties of those networks that constitute "heritable regulatory architectures". The definition of heritability is not clearly stated anywhere in the paper, but it appears to be that the steady-state of the network must have a non-zero expression of every entity. As this is the heart of the paper, it would be good to have the definition of heritable laid out clearly in either the main text or the SI.

## Model<br /> As described in the supplementary, but not in the main text, the author first chooses to endow these networks with simple linear dynamics; something like $\partial_t \vec{x} = A x - T x$, where the vector $x$ is the expression level of each entity, $A$ has the structure of the adjacency matrix of the directed graph, and $T$ is a diagonal matrix with positive entries that determines the degradation or dilution rate of each entity. From a readability standpoint, it would greatly aid the reader if the long list of equations in the SI were replaced with the simple rule that takes one from a network diagram to a set of ODEs.

The implementation of negative regulation is manifestly unphysical if the "entities" represent the expression level of, say, gene products. For instance, in regulatory network E, the value of the variable z can go negative (for instance, if the system starts with z= and y=0, and x > 0).

The model seems to suddenly change from Figure 4 onwards. While the results presented here have at least some attempt at classification or statistical rigour (i.e. Fig 4 D), there are suddenly three values associated with each entity ("property step, active fraction, and number"). Furthermore, the system suddenly appears to be stochastic. The reader is left unsure of what has happened, especially after having made the effort to deduce the model as it was in Figs 1 through 3. No respite is to be found in the SI, either, where this new stochastic model should have been described in sufficient detail to allow one to reproduce the simulation.

## Perturbations<br /> Inspired especially by experimental manipulations such as RNAi or mutagenesis, the author studies whether such perturbations can lead to a heritable change in network output. While this is naturally the case for permanent changes (such as mutagenesis), the author gives convincing examples of cases in which transient perturbations lead to heritable changes. Presumably, this is due the the underlying mutlistability of many networks, in which a perturbation can pop the system from one attractor to another.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no attempt at a systematic study of outcomes, nor a classification of when a particular behaviour is to be expected. Instead, there is a long and difficult-to-read description of numerical results that appear to have been sampled at random (in terms of both the architecture and parameter regime chosen). The main result here appears to be that "genetic" (permanent) and "epigenetic" (transient) perturbations can differ from each other -- and that architectures that share a response to genetic perturbation need not behave the same under an epigenetic one. This is neither surprising (in which case even illustrative evidence would have sufficed) nor is it explored with statistical or combinatorial rigour (e.g. how easy is it to mistake one architecture for another? What fraction share a response to a particular perturbation?)

As an additional comment, many of the results here are presented as depending on the topology of the network. However, each network is specified by many kinetic constants, and there is no attempt to consider the robustness of results to changes in parameters.

## DNA analogy<br /> At two points, the author makes a comparison between genetic information (i.e. DNA) and epigenetic information as determined by these heritable regulatory architectures. The two claims the author makes are that (i) heritable architectures are capable of transmitting "more heritable information" than genetic sequences, and (ii) that, unlike DNA, the connectivity (in the sense of mutations) between heritable architectures is sparse and uneven (i.e. some architectures are better connected than others).

In both cases, the claim is somewhat tenuous -- in essence, it seems an unfair comparison to consider the basic epigenetic unit to be an "entity" (e.g., an entire transcription factor gene product, or an organelle), while the basic genetic unit is taken to be a single base-pair. The situation is somewhat different if the relevant comparison was the typical size of a gene (e.g., 1 kb).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This manuscript uses an interesting abstraction of epigenetic inheritance systems as partially stable states in biological networks. This follows on previous review/commentary articles by the author. Most of the molecular epigenetic inheritance literature in multicellular organisms implies some kind of templating or copying mechanisms (DNA or histone methylation, small RNA amplification) and does not focus on stability from a systems biology perspective. By contrast, theoretical and experimental work on the stability of biological networks has focused on unicellular systems (bacteria), and neglects development. The larger part of the present manuscript (Figures 1-4) deals with such networks that could exist in bacteria. The author classifies and simulates networks of interacting entities, and (unsurprisingly) concludes that positive feedback is important for stability. This part is an interesting exercise but would need to be assessed by another reviewer for comprehensiveness and for originality in the systems biology literature. There is much literature on "epigenetic" memory in networks, with several stable states and I do not see here anything strikingly new.

An interesting part is then to discuss such networks in the framework of a multicellular organism rather than dividing unicellular organisms, and Figure 5 includes development in the picture. Finally, Figure 6 makes a model of the feedback loops in small RNA inheritance in C. elegans to explain differences in the length of inheritance of silencing in different contexts and for different genes and their sensitivity to perturbations. The proposed model for the memory length is distinct from a previously published model by Karin et al. (ref 49).

Strengths:<br /> A key strength of the manuscript is to reflect on conditions for epigenetic inheritance and its variable duration from the perspective of network stability.

Weaknesses:<br /> - I found confusing the distinction between the architecture of the network and the state in which it is. Many network components (proteins and RNAs) are coded in the genome, so a node may not disappear forever.

- From the Supplementary methods, the relationship between two nodes seems to be all in the form of dx/dt = Kxy . Y, which is just one way to model biological reactions. The generality of the results on network architectures that are heritable and robust/sensitive to change is unclear. Other interactions can have sigmoidal effects, for example. Is there no systems biology study that has addressed (meta)stability of networks before in a more general manner?

- Why is auto-regulation neglected? As this is a clear cause of metastable states that can be inherited, I was surprised not to find this among the networks.

- I did not understand the point of using the term "entity-sensor-property". Are they the same networks as above, now simulated in a computer environment step by step (thus allowing delays)?

- The final part applies the network modeling framework from above to small RNA inheritance in C. elegans. Given the positive feedback, what requires explanation is how fast the system STOPs small RNA inheritance. A previous model (Karin et al., ref. 49) builds on the fact that factors involved in inheritance are in finite quantity hence the different small RNAs "compete" for amplification and those targeting a given gene may eventually become extinct.

The present model relies on a simple positive feedback that in principle can be modulated, and this modulation remains outside the model. A possibility is to add negative regulation by factors such as HERI-1, that are known to limit the duration of the silencing.

The duration of silencing differs between genes. To explain this, the author introduces again outside the model the possibility of piRNAs acting on the mRNA, which may provide a difference in the stability of the system for different transcripts.<br /> At the end, I do not understand the point of modeling the positive feedback.

- From the initial analysis of abstract networks that do not rely on templating, I expected a discussion of possible examples from non-templated systems and was a little surprised by the end of the manuscript on small RNAs.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:

In recent years, Auxin treatment has been frequently used for inducing targeted protein degradation in Drosophila and various other organisms. This approach provides a way to acutely alter the levels of specific proteins. In this manuscript, the authors examine the impact of Auxin treatment and provide strong evidence that Auxin treatment elicits alterations in feeding activity, survival rates, lipid metabolism, and gene expression patterns. Researchers should carefully consider these effects to design experiments and interpret their data.

Strengths:

Regarding the widespread usage of Auxin mediated gene manipulation method, it is important to address whether the application of Auxin itself causes any physiological changes. The authors provide evidence of several Auxin effects. Experiments are suitably designed with appropriate sample size and data analysis methods.

Weaknesses:

The provided information is limited and not very helpful for many applications. For example, although authors briefly mentioned aging research, feeding behavior, and lipid data, RNA seq data are provided only for short-term (48 hours) treatment. Especially, since ovary phenotype was examined with long-term treatment (15 days), authors should also show other data for long-term treatment as well.

Although the authors show that Auxin causes a change in gene expression patterns and suggests the possible alteration of Gal4 expression levels, no cell-type-specific data is provided. It would be informative if the authors could examine the expression level of major Gal4 drivers.<br /> Authors should discuss how severe these changes are by comparing them with other treatments or conditions, such as starvation or mutant data (ideally, comparing with reported data or their own data if any?).

Reviewer #4 (Public Review):

This work by Fleck et al. and colleagues documented the auxin feeding-induced effects in adult flies, since auxin could be used in temporally controlled gene expression using a modified Gal4/Gal80 system. Overall, the experiments were well-designed and carefully executed. The results were quantified with appropriate statistical analyses. The paper was also well-written and the results were presented logically. The findings demonstrate that auxin-fed flies have significantly lower triglyceride levels than the control flies using Ultra High-pressure Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC-MS)-based metabolomics assays. Further transcriptome analyses using the whole flies show changes in genes involved in fatty acid metabolism. However, female oogenesis and fecundity do not seem to be affected, at least using the current assays. These results indicate that auxin may not be used in experiments involving lipid-related metabolism, but could be appropriate to be applied for other biological processes.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Recently the auxin-inducible gene expression system (AGES) has been frequently used for inducing target protein degradation acutely in Drosophila and other organisms. This study investigated the effects of auxin exposure on Drosophila adults, focusing on their feeding behavior, fatty acid metabolism, and oogenesis. The authors have provided strong evidence that high levels of auxin exposure perturb feeding behavior, survival rates, lipid metabolism, and gene expression patterns, providing a cautionary note for the field in using this technology.

This study documented the auxin feeding-induced effects in adult Drosophila, with a design with temporally controlled gene expression using a modified Gal4/Gal80 system. Due to the widespread usage of the auxin-mediated method, it is important to address whether the application of auxin itself causes any physiological changes.

Overall, the experiments were suitably designed with appropriate sample size and data analysis methods. The authors reported evidence of several auxin-induced effects, including strong evidence that high levels of auxin exposure perturb feeding behavior, survival rates, lipid metabolism, and gene expression patterns. For example, they found that auxin-fed flies have significantly lower triglyceride levels than the control flies using Ultra High-pressure Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC-MS)-based metabolomics assays. Further transcriptome analyses using the whole flies show changes in genes involved in fatty acid metabolism. However, female oogenesis and fecundity do not seem to be affected, at least using the current assays. These results indicate that auxin may not be used in experiments involving lipid-related metabolism, but could be appropriate to be applied for other biological processes.

However, this work can be improved based on the following recommendations:

1) Although authors showed that auxin causes gene expression changes including the possible alteration of Gal4 expression levels, no cell-type-specific data is provided. It would be informative to the Drosophila field if the authors could examine major Gal4 drivers in their expression levels, such as the ones used in studying metabolism and oogenesis.

2) Although the authors briefly mentioned aging research, feeding behavior, and lipid metabolism, RNA-seq data are provided only for short-term treatment (2 days). The ovary phenotype was examined with long-term treatment (15 days). It would be informative if the authors could also show other long-term treatment data.

3) The auxin used in this work is a more water-soluble version and at a high concentration (10 mM). In the C. elegans system, researchers are using a much lower concentration of auxin typically at 1 mM. Therefore, the discussion of their results in terms of potential impacts on other experimental systems should be done carefully. It would be helpful to know what impacts might be observed at a lower concentration of auxin. The recommendation would be that the authors add the 1 mM auxin data point to key elements of their analysis.

4) Another related question is whether these detected changes are reversible or not after exposure to auxin at different concentrations. This would be informative for researchers to better design their temporally controlled experiments.

5) It would also be helpful to know whether spermatogenesis is affected or not.

6) A few other points include changing the nomenclature and validating some of the key genes shown in Figure 3 using quantitative RT-PCR experiments with the tissues where the affected genes are known to be expressed and functional.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

In this study, Fleck and colleagues investigate the effects of auxin exposure on Drosophila melanogaster adults, focusing their analysis on feeding behavior, fatty acid metabolism, and oogenesis. The motivation for the study is that auxin-inducible transcription systems are now being used by Drosophila researchers to drive transcription using the Gal4-UAS system as a complement to Gal80ts versions of the system. I found the study to be carefully done. This study will be of interest to researchers using the Drosophila system, especially those focusing on fatty acid metabolism or physiology. The authors might address the following minor points.

1) Auxin, actually 1-naphthaleneaceid acid here, which is a more water-soluble version of auxin (indole-3-acetic acid) is used at what I consider to be a high concentration-10 mM. The problem I have is that the authors are discussing their results in terms of potential impacts on other experimental systems. At least for C. elegans, I think this is not a reasonable extension of the current dataset. In the C. elegans system, researchers are using 1 mM auxin. The authors note that their RNA-seq results suggest a xenobiotic response. Could this apparent xenobiotic response be due to a metabolic byproduct following auxin administration at high concentrations? Figure S1 A shows that there is quite a robust transcriptional response at 1 mM auxin. It would be helpful to know what impacts might be observed at this lower concentration in which the transcriptional induction could be used in the context of biologically meaningful experiments. The recommendation would be that the authors add the 1 mM auxin data point to key elements of their analysis.

2) This reviewer was confused by the genetic nomenclature the authors use. The authors have chosen to use the designation 3.1Lsp2-Gal4 (3.1Lsp2-Gal4AID). I think this is potentially confusing because a reader might think that it is the Gal4 transcription factor that is the direct target of auxin- and TIR1-mediated protein degradation, as I initially did. Rather, it is the Gal80 repressor protein that is the direct target. The authors might consider a nomenclature that is more reflective of how this system works. It would also be helpful if the full genotypes of strains were included in each figure legend.

3) The RNA-seq dataset does not appear to be validated by RT-PCR experiments. The authors should consider validating some of the key genes shown in Figure 3 using quantitative RT-PCR experiments, potentially adding a 1 mM auxin data point.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The study explores the mechanisms that preserve satellite cell function in extraocular muscles (EOMs) in a mouse model of familial Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that carries the G93A mutation in the Sod1 gene. ALS is a fatal neuromuscular disorder driven by motor neuron degeneration, leading to progressive wasting of most skeletal muscles but not EOM. The study first established that integrity of neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is preserved in EOM but not in limb and diaphragm muscles of G93A mice, and sodium butyrate (NaBu) treatment partially improves NMJ integrity in limb and diaphragm muscles of G93A mice. They also found a loss of synaptic satellite cells and renewability of cultured myoblasts in hindlimb and diaphragm muscles of G93A mice, but not in EOM, and NaBu treatment restores myoblast renewability. Using RNA-seq analysis, they identify that exon guidance molecules, particularly Cxcl12, are highly expressed in EOM myoblasts, along with more sustainable renewability. Using a neuromuscular co-culture model, they convincingly show that AAV-mediated Cxcl12 expression in G93A myotubes enhances motor axon extension and innervation. Strikingly, NaBu-mediated preservation of NMJ in limb muscles of G93A mice is associated with elevated expression of Cxcl12 in satellite cells and improved renewability of myoblasts. These results together offer molecular insights into genes critical for maintaining satellite cell function and revealing a mechanism through which NaBu ameliorates ALS.

Strengths:<br /> Combination of in vivo and cell culture models.<br /> Nice imaging of NMJ and associated satellite cells.<br /> Using motoneuron-myotube coculture to establish the mechanism.<br /> Tested and illustrated a mechanism through which a clinically used drug ameliorates ALS.

Weaknesses:<br /> Data presentation could be improved (see details in the Recommendation for Authors).<br /> It would have been nice to have included G93A motoneurons in the coculture study.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The work is potentially interesting as it outlines the role of satellite cells in supporting the functional decline of skeletal muscle due to the denervation process. In this context the authors analyze the functional and molecular characteristics of satellite cells in different muscle types differently affected by the degenerative process in the ALS model.

Strengths:<br /> The work illustrates a relevant aspect of the differences in stem cell potential in different skeletal muscles in a mouse model of the disease through a considerable amount of data and experimental models.

Weaknesses:<br /> However, there are some criticisms of the structuring of the results:

It is not clear how many animals were used in each experimental group (Figs 1 and 2, Fig. 2-9). In particular, it is unclear whether the dots in the histograms represent biological or technical replicates. Furthermore, the gender used in experimental groups is never specified. This last point appears to be important considering the gender differences observed in the SOD1G93A mouse model.

The first paragraph of the results lacks a functional analysis of the motor decline of the animals after the administration of sodium butyrate. The authors, in fact, administered NaBu around 90 days of age while in previous work the drug had been administered at a pre-symptomatic age. It would therefore be useful, to make the message more effective, to characterize the locomotor functions of the treated animals in parallel with the histological evidence of the integrity of the NMJ.

Figure 5 should be completed with the administration of NaBu also to the satellite cells isolated from the WT mouse, the same for figure 9 where AAV-CMV-Cxcl12 transduction of WT myotubes is missing.

In the experiment illustrated in Figure 8, treatment of cell cultures with NaBu would improve the outcome as well as the interference of Cxcl12 expression in myotubes derived from G93A EOM SC (Fig.9) would strengthen the specificity of this protein in axon guidance in this NMJ typical of a spared muscle in ALS.

In the "materials and methods" section the paragraph relating to the methods used for statistical analysis is missing.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In their paper, Li et al. investigate the transcriptome of satellite cells obtained from different muscle types including hindlimb, diaphragm, and extraocular muscles (EOM) from wild-type and G93A transgenic mice (end-stage ALS) in order to identify potential factors involved in the maintenance of the neuromuscular junction. The underlying hypothesis is that since EOMs are largely spared from this debilitating disease, they may secrete NMJ-protective factors. The results of their transcriptome analysis identified several axon guidance molecules including the chemokine Cxcl12, which are particularly enriched in EOM-derived satellite cells. Transduction of hindlimb-derived satellite cells with AAV encoding Cxcl12 reverted hindlimb-derived myotubes from the G93A mice into myotubes sharing phenotypic characteristics similar to those of EOM-derived satellite cells. Additionally, the authors were able to demonstrate that EOM-derived satellite cell myotube cultures are capable of enhancing axon extensions and innervation in co-culture experiments.

Strengths:<br /> The strength of the paper is that the authors successfully isolated and purified different populations of satellite cells, compared their transcriptomes, identified specific factors released by EOM-derived satellite cells, overexpressed one of these factors (the chemokine Cxcl12) by AAV-mediated transduction of hindlimb-derived satellite cells. The transduced cells were then able to support axon guidance and NMJ integrity. They also show that administration of Na butyrate to mice decreased NMJ denervation and satellite cell depletion of hind limbs. Furthermore, the addition of Na Butyrate to hindlimb-derived satellite cell myotube cultures increased Cxcl12 expression. These are impressive results providing important insights for the development of therapeutic targets to slow the loss of neuromuscular function characterizing ALS.

Weaknesses:<br /> Several important aspects have not been addressed by the authors, these include the following points which weaken the conclusions and interpretation of the results.

a) Na Butyrate was shown to extend the survival of G93A mice by Zhang et al. Na butyrate has a variety of biological effects, for example, anti-inflammatory effects inhibit mitochondrial oxidative stress, positively influence mitochondrial function, is a class I / II HDAC inhibitor, etc. What is the mechanism underlying its beneficial effects both in the context of mouse muscle function in the ALS G93A mice and in the in vitro myotube assay? Cytokine quantification as well as histone acetylation/methylation can be assessed experimentally and this is an important point that has not been appropriately investigated.

b) In the context of satellite cell characterization, on lines 151-152 the authors state that soleus muscles were excluded from further studies since they have a higher content of slow twitch fibers and are more similar to the diaphragm. This justification is not valid in the context of ALS as well as many other muscle disorders. Indeed, soleus and diaphragm muscles contain a high proportion of slow twitch fibers (up to 80% and 50% respectively) but soleus muscles are more spared than diaphragm muscles. What makes soleus muscles (and EOMs) more resistant to ALS NMJ injury? Satellite cells from soleus muscles need to be characterized in detail as well.

Furthermore, EOMs are complex muscles, containing many types of fibers and expressing different myosin heavy chain isoforms and muscle proteins. The fact that in mice both the globular layer and orbital layers of EOMs express slow myosin heavy chain isoform as well as myosin heavy chain 2X, 2A, and 2B (Zhou et al., 2010 IOVIS 51:6355-6363) also indicates that the sparing is not directly linked to the fast or slow twitch nature of the muscle fiber. This needs to be considered.

c) In the context of myotube formation from cultured satellite cells on lines 178-179 the authors stained the myotubes for myosin heavy chain. Because of the diversity of myosin heavy chain isoforms and different muscle origins of the satellite cells investigated, the isoform of myosin heavy chain expressed by the myotubes needs to be tested and described. It is not sufficient to state anti-MYH.

d) The original RNAseq results have not been deposited and while it is true that the authors have analyzed the results and described them in Figures 6 and 7 and relative supplements, the original data needs to be shown both as an xls list as a Volcano plots (q value versus log2 fold change). This will facilitate the independent interpretation of the results by the readers as some transcripts may not be listed. As presented it is rather difficult to identify which transcripts aside from Cxcl12 are commonly upregulated. Can the data be presented in a more visual way?

e) There is no section describing the statistical analysis methods used. In many figures, more than 2 groups are compared so the authors need to use an ANOVA followed by a post hoc test.

The authors have achieved their aim in showing that satellite cells derived from EOMs have a distinct transcriptome and that this may be the basis of their sparing in ALS. Furthermore, this work may help develop future therapeutic interventions for patients with ALS.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This study is carefully designed and well executed, including a comprehensive suite of endpoint measures and large sample sizes that give confidence in the results. The authors have satisfactorily addressed my concerns. Specifically, the new graphical description of the experimental design along a timeline will be very helpful in guiding the reader through the paper. The narrative style is much improved and highly technical terminology is minimized. The authors now also address the question of sex differences, which will be important to study in future research. The additional analyses carried out by the authors are illuminating.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

It is well known that as seasonal day length increases, molecular cascades in the brain are triggered to ready an individual for reproduction. Some of these changes, however, can begin to occur before the day length threshold is reached, suggesting that short days similarly have the capacity to alter aspects of phenotype. This study seeks to understand the mechanisms by which short days can accomplish this task, which is an interesting and important question in the field of organismal biology and endocrinology.

The set of studies that this manuscript presents is comprehensive and well-controlled. Many of the effects are also strong and thus offer tantalizing hints about the endo-molecular basis by which short days might stimulate major changes in body condition. Another strength is that the authors put together a compelling model for how different facets of an animal's reproductive state come "on line" as day length increases and spring approaches. In this way, I think the authors broadly fulfill their aims.

Joint Public Review:

The authors have greatly improved the manuscript after detailed revisions. I would like to discuss with the authors on how to make their findings more general across taxonomic groups. For example, whether it is possible for authors to conduct a more comprehensive analyses by including amphibians, birds, and mammals together to test the general role of the relationship between brain evolution and environmental resources, and what ecological factors determine the observed brain size variations among taxa except for their biological differences such as energetic demands. It is especially for population-level analyses when related data is available in the future, which may provide very helpful insights into the brain size biogeographic patterns and their determinants across taxa.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This study revealed that one of the mechanisms for iTreg (induced-Treg) lineage instability upon restimulation is through sustained store-operated calcium entry (SOCE), which activates transcription factor NFAT and promotes changes in chromatin accessibility to activated T cell-related genes. The authors revealed that, unlike thymus-derived Tregs (tTreg) with blunted calcium signaling and NFAT activation, iTregs respond to TCR restimulation with fully activated SOCE and NFAT similar to activated conventional T cells. Activated NFAT binds to open chromatin regions in genes related to T helper cells, increases their expression, and leads to the instability of iTreg cells. On the other hand, inhibition of the SOCE/NFAT pathway by chemical inhibitors could partially rescue the loss of Foxp3 expression in iTreg upon restimulation. The conclusion of the study is unexpected since previous studies showed that NFAT is required for Foxp3 induction and iTreg differentiation (Tone Y et al, Nat Immunol. 2008, PMID: 18157133; Vaeth M et al, PNAS, 2012, PMID: 22991461). Additionally, Foxp3 interacts with NFAT to control Treg function (Wu Y et al, Cell, 2006, PMID: 16873067). The data presented in this study demonstrated the complex role NFAT plays in the generation and stability of iTreg cells.

Several concerns are raised from the current study.<br /> 1. Previous studies showed that iTregs generated in vitro from culturing naïve T cells with TGF-b are intrinsically unstable, and prone to losing Foxp3 expression due to lack of DNA demethylation in the enhancer region of the Foxp3 locus (Polansky JK et al, Eur J Immunol., 2008, PMID: 18493985). It is known that removing TGF-b from the culture media leads to rapid loss of Foxp3 expression. In the current study, TGF-b was not added to the media during iTreg restimulation, therefore, the primary cause for iTreg instability should be the lack of the positive signal provided by TGF-b. NFAT signal is secondary at best in this culturing condition.

This point has been addressed in the revision. Figure Q1 could be added to the manuscript as a supplementary figure.

2. It is not clear whether the NFAT pathway is unique in accelerating the loss of Foxp3 expression upon iTreg restimulation. It is also possible that enhancing T cell activation in general could promote iTreg instability. The authors could explore blocking T cell activation by inhibiting other critical pathways, such as NF-kb and c-Jun/c-Fos, to see if a similar effect could be achieved compared to CsA treatment.

This point has been sufficiently addressed in the revision.

3. The authors linked chromatin accessibility and increased expression of T helper cell genes to the loss of Foxp3 expression and iTreg instability. However, it is not clear how the former can lead to the latter. It is also not clear whether NFAT binds directly to the Foxp3 locus in the restimulated iTregs and inhibits Foxp3 expression.

This point has been addressed in the rebuttal. Could the authors incorporate their comments in the rebuttal into the discussion section of the revised manuscript?

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The phenotypic instability of in vitro-induced Treg cells (iTregs) has been discussed for a long time, mainly in the context of the epigenetic landscape of Treg-signature genes; e.g. Treg-specifically CpG-hypomethylated Foxp3 CNS2 enhancer region. However, it has been insufficiently understood the upstream molecular mechanisms, the particularity of intracellular signaling of natural Treg cells, and how they connect to stable/unstable suppressive function.

Huiyun Lv et al. addressed the issue of phenotypic instability of in vitro-induced regulatory T cells (iTregs), which is a different point from the physiological natural Treg cells and an obstacle to the therapeutic use of iTreg cells. The authors focused on the difference between iTreg and nTreg cells from the perspective of their control of store-operated calcium entry (SOCE)-mediated cellular signaling, and they clearly showed that the sustained SOCE signaling in iTreg and nTreg cells led to phenotypic instability. Moreover, the authors pointed out the correlation between the incomplete conversion of chromatin configuration and the NFAT-mediated control of effector-type gene expression profile in iTreg cells. These findings potentially cultivate our understanding of the cellular identity of regulatory T cells and may shed light on the therapeutic use of Treg cells in many clinical contexts.

The authors demonstrated the biological contribution of Ca2+ signaling with the variable methods, which ensure the reliability of the results and the claims of the authors. iTreg cells sustained SOCE-signaling upon stimulation while natural Treg cells had lower strength and shorter duration of SOCE-signaling. The result was consistent with the previously proposed concept; a certain range of optimal strength and duration of TCR-signaling shape the Treg generation and maintenance, and it provides us with further in-depth mechanistic understanding.

In the later section, authors found the incomplete installment of Treg-type open chromatin landscape in some effector/helper function-related gene loci in iTreg cells. These findings propose the significance of focusing on not only the "Treg"-associated gene loci but also "Teffector-ness"-associated regions to determine the Treg conversion at the epigenetic level.

Limitations;<br /> ・NFAT regulation did not explain all of the differences between iTregs and nTregs, as the authors mentioned as a limitation.<br /> ・Also, it is still an open question whether NFAT can directly modulate the chromatin configuration on the effector-type gene loci, or whether NFAT exploits pre-existing open chromatin due to the incomplete conversion of Treg-type chromatin landscape in iTreg cells. The authors did not fully demonstrate that the distinct pattern of chromatin regional accessibility found in iTreg cells is the direct cause of an effector-type gene expression.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The authors of this study seek to visualize NS1 purified from dengue virus infected cells. They infect vero cells with DV2-WT and DV2 NS1-T164S (a mutant virus previously characterized by the authors). The authors utilize an anti-NS1 antibody to immunoprecipitate NS1 from cell supernatants and then elute the antibody/NS1 complex with acid. The authors evaluate the eluted NS1 by SDS-PAGE, Native Page, mass spec, negative-stain EM, and eventually Cryo-EM. SDS-PAGE, mas spec, and native page reveal a >250 Kd species containing both NS1 and the proteinaceous component of HDL (ApoA1). The authors produce evidence to suggest that this population is predominantly NS1 in complex with ApoA1. This contrasts with recombinantly produced NS1 (obtained from a collaborator) which did not appear to be in complex with or contain ApoA1 (Figure 1C). The authors then visualize their NS1 stock in complex with their monoclonal antibody by CryoEM. For NS1-WT, the major species visualized by the authors was a ternary complex of an HDL particle in complex with an NS1 dimer bound to their mAB. For their mutant NS1-T164S, they find similar structures, but in contrast to NS1-WT, they visualize free NS1 dimers in complex with 2 Fabs (similar to what's been reported previously) as one of the major species. This highlights that different NS1 species have markedly divergent structural dynamics. It's important to note that the electron density maps for their structures do appear to be a bit overfitted since there are many regions with electron density that do not have a predicted fit and their HDL structure does not appear to have any predicted secondary structure for ApoA1. The authors then map the interaction between NS1 and ApoA1 using cross-linking mass spectrometry revealing numerous NS1-ApoA1 contact sites in the beta-roll and wing domain. The authors find that NS1 isolated from DENV infected mice is also present as a >250 kD species containing ApoA1. They further determine that immunoprecipitation of ApoA1 out of the sera from a single dengue patient correlates with levels of NS1 (presumably COIPed by ApoA1) in a dose-dependent manner.

In the end, the authors make some useful observations for the NS1 field (mostly confirmatory) providing additional insight into the propensity of NS1 to interact with HDL and ApoA1. The study does not provide any functional assays to demonstrate activity of their proteins or conduct mutagenesis (or any other assays) to support their interaction predications. The authors assertion that higher-order NS1 exists primarily as a NS1 dimer in complex with HDL is not well supported as their purification methodology of NS1 likely introduces bias as to what NS1 complexes are isolated. While their results clearly reveal NS1 in complex with ApoA1, the lack of other NS1 homo-oligomers may be explained by how they purify NS1 from virally infected supernatant. Because NS1 produced during viral infection is not tagged, the authors use an anti-NS1 monoclonal antibody to purify NS1. This introduces a source of bias since only NS1 oligomers with their mAb epitope exposed will be purified. Further, the use of acid to elute NS1 may denature or alter NS1 structure and the authors do not include controls to test functionality of their NS1 stocks (capacity to trigger endothelial dysfunction or immune cell activation). The acid elution may force NS1 homo-oligomers into dimers which then reassociate with ApoA1 in a manner that is not reflective of native conditions. Conducting CryoEM of NS1 stocks only in the presence of full-length mAbs or Fabs also severely biases what species of NS1 is visualized since any NS1 oligomers without the B-ladder domain exposed will not be visualized. If the residues obscured by their mAb are involved in formation of higher-order oligomers then this antibody would functionally inhibit these species from forming. The absence of critical controls, use of one mAb, and acid elution for protein purification severely limits the interpretation of these data and do not paint a clear picture of if NS1 produced during infection is structurally distinct from recombinant NS1. Certainly there is novelty in purifying NS1 from virally infected cells, but without using a few different NS1 antibodies to purify NS1 stocks (or better yet a polyclonal population of antibodies) it's unclear if the results of the authors are simply a consequence of the mAb they selected.

Data produced from numerous labs studying structure and function of flavivirus NS1 proteins provide diverse lines of evidence that the oligomeric state of NS1 is dynamic and can shift depending on context and environment. This means that the methodology used for NS1 production and purification will strongly impact the results of a study. The data in this manuscript certainly capture one of these dynamic states and overall support the general model of a dynamic NS1 oligomer that can associate with both host proteins as well as itself but the assertions of this manuscript are overall too strong given their data, as there is little evidence in this manuscript, and none available in the large body of existing literature, to support that NS1 exists only as a dimer associated with ApoA1. More likely the results of this paper are a result of their NS1 purification methodology.

Suggestions for the Authors:

Major:

1. Because of the methodology used for NS1 purification, it is not clear from the data provided if NS1 from viral infection differs from recombinant NS1. Isolating NS1 from viral infection using a polyclonal antibody population would be better to answer their questions. On this point, Vero cells are also not the best candidate for their NS1 production given these cells do not come from a human. A more relevant cell line like U937-DC-SIGN would be preferable.

2. The authors need to support their interaction predictions and models via orthogonal assays like mutagenesis followed by HDL/ApoA1 complexing and even NS1 functional assays. The authors should be able to mutate NS1 at regions predicted to be critical for ApoA1/HDL interaction. This is critical to support the central conclusions of this manuscript.

3. The authors need to show that the NS1 stocks produced using acid elution are functional compared to standard recombinantly produced NS1. Do acidic conditions impact structure/function of NS1?

4. Overall, the data obtained from the mutant NS1 (contrasted to WT NS1) reveals how dynamic the oligomeric state of NS1 proteins are but the authors do not provide any insight into how/why this is, some additional lines of evidence using either structural studies or mutagenesis to compare WT and their mutant and even NS1 from a different serotype of DENV would help the field to understand the dynamic nature of NS1.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:

Chew et al describe interaction of the flavivirus protein NS1 with HDL using primarily cryoEM and mass spec. The NS1 was secreted from dengue virus infected Vero cells, and the HDL were derived from the 3% FBS in the culture media. NS1 is a virulence factor/toxin and is a biomarker for dengue infection in patients. The mechanisms of its various activities in the host are incompletely understood. NS1 has been seen in dimer, tetramer and hexamer forms. It is well established to interact with membrane surfaces, presumably through a hydrophobic surface of the dimer form, and the recombinant protein has been shown to bind HDL. In this study, cryoEM and crosslinking-mass spec are used to examine NS1 secreted from virus-infected cells, with the conclusion that the sNS1 is predominantly/exclusively HDL-associated through specific contacts with the ApoA1 protein.

Strengths:

The experimental results are consistent with previously published data.

Weaknesses:

CryoEM:

Some of the neg-stain 2D class averages for sNS1 in Fig S1 clearly show 1 or 2 NS1 dimers on the surface of a spherical object, presumably HDL, and indicate the possibility of high-quality cryoEM results. However, the cryoEM results are disappointing. The cryo 2D class averages and refined EM map in Fig S4 are of poor quality, indicating sub-optimal grid preparation or some other sample problem. Some of the FSC curves (2 in Fig S7 and 1 in Fig S6) have extremely peculiar shapes, suggesting something amiss in the map refinement. The sharp drop in the "corrected" FSC curves in Figs S5c and S6c (upper) indicate severe problems. The stated resolutions (3.42 & 3.82 Å) for the sNS1ts-Fab56.2 are wildly incompatible with the images of the refined maps in Figs 3 & S7. At those resolutions, clear secondary structural elements should be visible throughout the map. From the 2D averages and 3D maps shown in the figures this does not seem to be the case. Local resolution maps should be shown for each structure.

The samples were clearly challenging for cryoEM, leading to poor quality maps that were difficult to interpret. None of the figures are convincing that NS1, Ab56.2 or Fab56.2 are correctly fit into EM maps. There is no indication of ApoA1 helices. Details of the fit of models to density for key regions of the higher-resolution EM maps should be shown and the models should be deposited in the PDB. An example of modeling difficulty is clear in the sNS1ts dimer with bound Fab56.2 (figs 3c & S7e). For this complex, the orientation of the Fab56.2 relative to the sNS1ts dimer in this submission (Fig 3c) is substantially different than in the bioRxiv preprint (Fig 3c). Regions of empty density in Fig 3c also illustrate the challenge of building a model into this map.

Mass spec:

Crosslinking-mass spec was used to detect contacts between NS1 and ApoA1, providing strong validation of the sNS1-HDL association. As the crosslinks were detected in a bulk sample, they show that NS1 is near ApoA1 in many/most HDL particles, but they do not indicate a specific protein-protein complex. Thus, the data do not support the model of an NS1-ApoA1 complex in Fig 4d. Further, a specific NS1-ApoA1 interaction should have evidence in the EM maps (helical density for ApoA1), but none is shown or mentioned. If such exists, it could perhaps be visualized after focused refinement of the map for sNS1ts-HDL with Fab56.2 (Fig S7d). The finding that sNS1-ApoA1 crosslinks involved residues on the hydrophobic surface of the NS1 dimer confirms previous data that this NS1 surface engages with membranes and lipids.

Sample quality:

The paper lacks any validation that the purified sNS1 retains established functions, for example the ability to enhance virus infectivity or to promote endothelial dysfunction. Peculiarities include the gel filtration profiles (Fig 2a), which indicate identical elution volumes (apparent MWs) for sNS1wt-HDL bound to Ab562 (~150 kDa) and to the ~3X smaller Fab56.2 (~50 kDa). There should also be some indication of sNS1wt-HDL pairs crosslinked by the full-length Ab, as can be seen in the raw cryoEM micrograph (Fig S5b).

Obtaining high quality structures is often more demanding of sample integrity than are activity assays. Given the low quality of the cryoEM maps, it's possible that the acidification step in immunoaffinity purification damaged the HDL complex. No validation of HDL integrity, for example with acid-treated HDL, is reported. Acid treatment is perhaps discounted by a statement (line 464) that another group also used immunoaffinity purification in a recent study (ref 20) reporting sNS1 bound to HDL. However the statement is incorrect; the cited study used affinity purification via a strep-tag on recombinant sNS1.

Discussion:

The Discussion reflects a view that the NS1 secreted from virus-infected cells is a 1:1 sNS1dimer:HDL complex with the specific NS1-ApoA1 contacts detected by crosslinking mass spec. This is inconsistent with both the neg-stain 2D class average with 2 sNS1 dimers on an HDL (Fig S1c) and with the recent study of Flamand & co-workers showing 1-3 NS1 dimers per HDL (ref 20). It is also ignores the propensity of NS1 to associate with membranes and lipids. It is far more likely that NS1 association with HDL is driven by these hydrophobic interactions than by specific protein-protein contacts. A lengthy Discussion section (lines 461-522) includes several chemically dubious or inconsistent statements, all based on the assumption that specific ApoA1 contacts are essential to NS1 association with HDL and that sNS1 oligomers higher than the dimer necessarily involve ApoA1 interaction, conclusions that are not established by the data in this paper.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> Transposable Elements (TEs) are exogenously acquired DNA regions that have played important roles in the evolutional acquisition of various biological functions. TEs may have been important in the evolution of the immune system, but their role in thymocytes has not been fully clarified.

Using the human thymus scRNA dataset, the authors suggest the existence of cell type-specific TE functions in the thymus. In particular, it is interesting to show that there is a unique pattern in the type and expression level of TEs in thymic antigen-presenting cells, such as mTECs and pDCs, and that they are associated with transcription factor activities. Furthermore, the authors suggested that TEs may be non-redundantly regulated in expression by Aire, Fezf2, and Chd4, and that some TE-derived products are translated and present as proteins in thymic antigen-presenting cells. These findings provide important insights into the evolution of the acquired immune system and the process by which the thymus acquires its function as a primary lymphoid tissue.

Strengths:<br /> 1. By performing single-cell level analysis using scRNA-seq datasets, the authors extracted essential information on heterogeneity within the cell population. It is noteworthy that this revealed the diversity of expression not only of known autoantigens but also of TEs in thymic antigen-presenting cells.

2. The attempt to use mass spectrometry to confirm the existence of TE-derived peptides is worthwhile, even if the authors did not obtain data on as many transcripts as expected.

3. The use of public data sets and the clearly stated methods of analysis improved the transparency of the results.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The authors sometimes made overstatements largely due to the lack or shortage of experimental evidence.

For example in figure 4, the authors concluded that thymic pDCs produced higher copies of TE-derived RNAs to support the constitutive expression of type-I interferons in thymic pDCs, unlike peripheral pDCs. However, the data was showing only the correlation between the distinct TE expression pattern in pDCs and the abundance of dsRNAs. We are compelled to say that the evidence is totally too weak to mention the function of TEs in the production of interferon. Even if pDCs express a distinct type and amount of TE-derived transcripts, it may be a negligible amount compared to the total cellular RNAs. How many TE-derived RNAs potentially form the dsRNAs? Are they over-expressed in pDCs?<br /> The data interpretation requires more caution to connect the distinct results of transcriptome data to the biological significance.

2. Lack of generality of specific examples. This manuscript discusses the whole genomic picture of TE expression. In addition, one good way is to focus on the specific example to clearly discuss the biological significance of the acquisition of TEs for the thymic APC functions and the thymic selection.

In figure 2, the authors focused on ETS-1 and its potential target genes ZNF26 and MTMR3, however, the significance of these genes in NK cell function or development is unclear. The authors should examine and discuss whether the distinct features of TEs can be found among the genomic loci that link to the fundamental function of the thymus, e.g., antigen processing/presentation.

3. Since the deep analysis of the dataset yielded many intriguing suggestions, why not add a discussion of the biological reasons and significance?<br /> For example, in Figure 1, why is TE expression negatively correlated with proliferation? cTEC-TE is mostly postnatal, while mTEC-TE is more embryonic. What does this mean?

4. To consolidate the experimental evidence about pDCs and TE-derived dsRNAs, one option is to show the amount of TE-derived RNA copies among total RNAs. The immunohistochemistry analysis in figure 4 requires additional data to demonstrate that overlapped staining was not caused by technical biases (e.g. uneven fixation may cause the non-specifically stained regions/cells). To show this, authors should have confirmed not only the positive stainings but also the negative staining (e.g. CD3, etc.). Another possible staining control was showing that non-pDC (CD303- cell fractions in this case) cells were less stained by the ds-RNA probe.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary: Larouche et al show that TEs are broadly expressed in thymic cells, especially in mTECs and pDCs. Their data suggest a possible involvement of TEs in thymic gene regulation and IFN-alpha secretion. They also show that at least some TE-derived peptides are presented by MHC-I in the thymus.

Strengths: The idea of high/broad TE expression in the thymus as a mechanism for preventing TE-mediated autoimmunity is certainly an attractive one, as is their involvement in IFN-alpha secretion therein. The analyses and experiments presented here are therefore a very useful primer for more in-depth experiments, as the authors point out towards the end of the discussion.

Weaknesses: Throughout the manuscript, most conclusions are presented as proven causal relationships that the current data do not demonstrate. In the abstract, results, and discussion, the following conclusions are drawn that are not supported by the data: a) TEs interact with multiple transcription factors in thymic cells, b) TE expression leads to dsRNA formation, activation of RIG-I/MDA5 and secretion of IFN-alpha, c) TEs are regulated by cell proliferation and expression of KZFPs in the thymus. All these statements derive from correlations. Only one TF has ChIP-seq data associated with it, dsRNA formation and/or IFN-alpha secretion could be independent of TE expression, and whilst KZFPs most likely regulate TEs in the thymus, the data do not demonstrate it. The authors also seem to suggest that AIRE, FEZF2, and CHD4 regulate TEs directly, but binding is not shown. The manuscript needs a thorough revision to be absolutely clear about the correlative nature of the described associations.

On the technical side, there are many dangers about analysing RNA-seq data at the subfamily level and without stringent quality control checks. Outputs may be greatly confounded by pervasive transcription (see PMID 31425522), DNA contamination, and overlap of TEs with highly expressed genes. Whether TE transcripts are independent units or part of a gene also has important implications for the conclusions drawn. I would say that for most purposes of this work, an analysis restricted to independent TE transcripts, with appropriate controls for DNA contamination, would provide great reassurances that the results from subfamily-level analyses are sound. Showing examples from the genome browser throughout would also help.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

This work provides significant insight into freshwater cable bacteria (CB) and is an important contribution to the emerging CB literature. In this manuscript, Yang et al. describe current-voltage measurements on CB collected from two freshwater sources in Southern California. The studies use electrostatic and conductive atomic force microscopies, as well as four-probe measurements. These measurements are consistent with back-of-the-envelope calculations on conductivities needed to sustain CB function. The data shows that freshwater CB have a similar structure and function to the more studied marine cable bacteria.

Strengths:

Excellent measurements on a new class of cable bacteria.

Weaknesses:

The paper would benefit from additional analysis of the data.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:

In this work, Mohamed Y. El-Naggar and co-workers present a detailed electronic characterization of cable bacteria from Southern California freshwater sediments. The cable bacteria could be reliably enriched in laboratory incubations, and subsequent TEM characterization and 16S rRNA gene phylogeny demonstrated their belonging to the genus Candidatus Electronema. Atomic force microscopy and two-point probe resistance measurements were then used to map out the characteristics of the conductive nature, followed by microelectrode four-probe measurements to quantify the conductivity.

Interestingly, the authors observe that some freshwater cable bacteria filaments displayed a higher degree of robustness upon oxygen exposure than what was previously reported for marine cable bacteria. Finally, a single nanofiber conductivity on the order of 0.1 S/cm is calculated, which matches the expected electron current densities linking electrogenic sulphur oxidation to oxygen reduction in sediment. This is consistent with hopping transport.

Strengths and weaknesses:

A comprehensive study is applied to characterise the conductive properties of the sampled freshwater cable bacteria. Electrostatic force microscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy provide direct evidence of the location of conductive structures. Four-probe microelectrode devices are used to quantify the filament resistance, which presents a significant advantage over commonly used two-probe measurements that include contributions from contact resistances. While the methodology is convincing, I find that some of the conclusions seem to be drawn on very limited sample sizes, which display widely different behaviour. In particular:

The authors observe that the conductivity of freshwater filaments may be less sensitive to oxygen exposure than previously observed for marine filaments. This is indeed the case for an interdigitated array microelectrode experiment (presented in Figure 5) and for a conductive atomic force microscopy experiment (described in line 391), but the opposite is observed in another experiment (Figure S1). It is therefore difficult to assess the validity of the conclusion until sufficient experimental replications are presented.

The calculation of a single nanofiber conductivity is based on experiment and calculation with significant uncertainty. E.g. for the number of nanofibres in a single filament that varies depending on the filament size (Frontiers in microbiology, 2018, 9: 3044.), and the measured CB resistance, which does not scale well with inner probe separation (Figure 5). A more rigorous consideration of these uncertainties is required.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors are developing differences in the dynamics and allostery of the SARS-COV-2 spike protein for several of the variants. They consider mainly the delta, omicron, and Omicron XBB, and show major differences in the dynamics of the open forms. In the most compelling step, they go further and compare against experimental values of IC50 and KD.

Overall, this is an important application of methods that were developed in the senior author's lab.

Strengths:<br /> The paper presents a strong case for the difference in the dynamical behavior of these sequence variants and relates this to available experiments.

Weaknesses:<br /> The work does not drill down to the effects of individual mutations, which might be possible and would improve our understanding of the effects of single mutations and would dissect the contributions of each single difference in sequence.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The authors set out to identify CAPs (Candidate Adaptive Polymorphyisms), i.e., simply put mutations that carry a potential functional advantage, and utilize computational methods based on the perturbation of C-alpha positions with an Elastic Network Model to determine if dynamics of CAP residues are different in any way.

In my opinion this manuscript *may* suffer from fundamental flaws in the detection of CAPs, and does not provide enough analysis and discussion to determine if the methodology is applicable. A highly expanded and rewritten manuscript may help clarify the results. Lastly, the authors severely ignore the vast literature and results already in the public domain, not only with respect to the use of normal-mode analysis methods as well as the detection of functionally relevant mutations in general and to understand the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein in particular.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The manuscript uses a combination of evolutionary approaches and structural/dynamics observations to provide mechanistic insights into the adaptation of the Spike protein during the evolution of variants.

Strengths:<br /> Very well-written text, pleasant and well-described pictures, and didactical and clear description of the methods.<br /> The citation of relevant similar results with different approaches is of note.<br /> Comparing the calculated scores with previous experimentally obtained data is one of the strongest points of the manuscript.

Weaknesses:<br /> A longer discussion of how the 19 orthologous coronavirus sequences were chosen would be helpful, as the rest of the paper hinges on this initial choice.<br /> The 'reasonable similarity' with previously published data is not well defined, nor there was any comment about some of the residues analyzed (namely 417-484).<br /> There seem to be no replicas of the MD simulations, nor a discussion of the convergence of these simulations.<br /> A more detailed description of the equilibration and production schemes used in MD would be helpful.<br /> Moreover, there is no discussion of how the equilibration procedure is evaluated, in particular for non-experts this would be helpful in judging the reliability of the procedure.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

In this manuscript, Butkovic et al. perform a genome-wide association (GWA) study on Arabidopsis thaliana inoculated with the natural pathogen turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) in laboratory conditions, with the aim to identify genetic associations with virus infection-related parameters. For this purpose, they use a large panel of A. thaliana inbred lines and two strains of TuMV, one naïve and one pre-adapted through experimental evolution. A strong association is found between a region in chromosome 2 (1.5 Mb) and the risk of systemic necrosis upon viral infection, although the causative gene remains to be pinpointed.

This project is a remarkable tour de force, but the conclusions that can be reached from the results obtained are unfortunately underwhelming. Some aspects of the work could be clarified, and presentation modified, to help the reader.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

The manuscript presents a valuable investigation of genetic associations related to plant resistance against the turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model. The study infects over 1,000 A. thaliana inbred lines with both ancestral and evolved TuMV and assesses four disease-related traits: infectivity, disease progress, symptom severity, and necrosis. The findings reveal that plants infected with the evolved TuMV strain generally exhibited more severe disease symptoms than those infected with the ancestral strain. However, there was considerable variation among plant lines, highlighting the complexity of plant-virus interactions.

A major genetic locus on chromosome 2 was identified, strongly associated with symptom severity and necrosis. This region contained several candidate genes involved in plant defense against viruses. The study also identified additional genetic loci associated with necrosis, some common to both viral isolates and others specific to individual isolates. Structural variations, including transposable element insertions, were observed in the genomic region linked to disease traits.

Surprisingly, the minor allele associated with increased disease symptoms was geographically widespread among the studied plant lines, contrary to typical expectations of natural selection limiting the spread of deleterious alleles. Overall, this research provides valuable insights into the genetic basis of plant responses to TuMV, highlighting the complexity of these interactions and suggesting potential avenues for improving crop resilience against viral infections.

Overall, the manuscript is well-written, and the data are generally high-quality. The study is generally well-executed and contributes to our understanding of plant-virus interactions. I suggest that the authors consider the following points in future versions of this manuscript:

1. Major allele and minor allele definition: When these two concepts are mentioned in the figure, there is no clear definition of the two words in the text. Especially for major alleles, there is no clear definition in the whole text. It is recommended that the author further elaborate on these two concepts so that readers can more easily understand the text and figures.

2. Possible confusion caused by three words (Major focus / Major association and major allele): Because there is no explanation of the major allele in the text, it may cause readers to be confused with these two places in the text when trying to interpret the meaning of major allele: major locus (line 149)/ the major association with disease phenotypes (line 183).

3. Discussion: The authors could provide a more detailed discussion of how the research findings might inform crop protection strategies or breeding programs.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary of Work<br /> This paper conducts the largest GWAS study of A. thaliana in response to a viral infection. The paper identifies a 1.5 MB region in the chromosome associated with disease, including SNPs, structural variation, and transposon insertions. Studies further validate the association experimentally with a separate experimental infection procedure with several lines and specific T-DNA mutants. Finally, the paper presents a geographic analysis of the minor disease allele and the major association. The major take-home message of the paper is that structural variants and not only SNPs are important changes associated with disease susceptibility. The manuscript also makes a strong case for negative frequency-dependent selection maintaining a disease susceptibility locus at low frequency.

Strengths and Weaknesses<br /> A major strength of this manuscript is the large sample sizes, careful experimental design, and rigor in the follow-up experiments. For instance, mentioning non-infected controls and using methods to determine if geographic locus associations were due to chance. The strong result of a GWAS-detected locus is impressive given the complex interaction between plant genotypes and strains noted in the results. In addition to the follow-up experiments, the geographic analysis added important context and broadened the scope of the study beyond typical lab-based GWAS studies. I find very few weaknesses in this manuscript.

Support of Conclusions<br /> The support for the conclusions is exceptional. This is due to the massive amount of evidence for each statement and also due to the careful consideration of alternative explanations for the data.

Significance of Work<br /> This manuscript will be of great significance in plant disease research, both for its findings and its experimental approach. The study has very important implications for genetic associations with disease beyond plants.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

The authors' goal here was to explore how a non-hebbian form of plasticity, heterosynaptic LTP, could shape neuronal responses and learning. They used several conceptually and technically innovative approaches to answer this. First, they identified a behavioral paradigm that was a subthreshold training paradigm (stimulation of thalamic inputs with a footshock), which could be 'converted' to memory via homosynaptic LTP (HFS of thalamic inputs). They then found that stimulation of 'cortical' inputs could also convert the subthreshold stimulation to a lasting memory and that this was associated with a change in neuronal response, akin to LTP. Finally, they provided some slice work that demonstrated that stimulation of cortical inputs could stabilize LTP at thalamic inputs.

Strengths:

1) The approach was innovative and asked an important question in the field.

2) The studies are, for the most part, quite rigorous, using a novel dual opsin approach to probe multiple inputs in vivo.

3) The authors explore neural responses both in vivo and ex vivo, as well as leveraging a 'simple' behavior output of freezing.

Weaknesses:

1) There appears to be a flaw in the exploration of cortical inputs. the authors never show that HFS of cortical inputs has no effect in the absence of thalamic stimulation. It appears that there is a citation showing this, but I think it would be important to show this in this study as well.

2) It is somewhat confusing that the authors refer to the cortical input as driving heterosynaptic LTP, but this is not shown until Figure 4J, that after non-associative conditioning (unpaired shock and tone) HFS of the cortex can drive freezing and heterosynaptic LTP of thalamic inputs. Further, the authors are 'surprised' by this outcome, which appears to be what they predict.

3) 'Cortex' as a stimulation site is vague. The authors have coordinates they used, it is unclear why they are not using standard anatomical nomenclature.

4) The authors' repeated use of homoLTP and heteroLTP to define the input that is being stimulated makes it challenging to understand the experimental detail. While I appreciate this is part of the goal, more descriptive words such as 'thalamic' and 'cortical' would make this much easier to understand.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Faress et al. ask the question of how synaptic plasticity (i.e. long-term potentiation, LTP) induced at different time points and different synapses in relationship to learning can transform memories supported by these circuits. The authors adopted an experimental design developed by Nabavi et al, 2014 and used male mice to optogenetically induce a weak fear memory in thalamo-LA circuits by pairing an optical conditioned stimulus (CS) at thalamo-LA synapses with a footshock unconditioned stimulus (US), or subjected the mice to an unpairing of the opto-CS and the footshock US. They then investigated how homosynaptic (thalamo-LA)- or heterosynaptic (cortico-LA) high-frequency stimulation (HFS) -that would induce LTP- delivered at different time points before and after learning can transform the opto-fear memory by using state of the art in vivo dual-wavelength optogenetics. They find that homosynaptic HFS delivered before or after learning transforms weak memories into stronger ones, whereas heterosynaptic HFS can do so when delivered immediately after learning. Both homo- and hetero-HFS delivered after unpairing produce a 24 h fear memory for the opto-CS. Lastly, they show that synaptic potentiation accompanies the strengthening of fear memory induced by hetero HFS in freely moving mice.

The significance of the study lies in showing in vivo that plasticity induced at different times or different synapses than those engaged during learning can modify memory and the synaptic strength in a synaptic pathway related to that memory. While heterosynaptic and timing-dependent effects in synaptic plasticity have been described largely ex vivo on shorter time scales, the discovery of lasting behavioral effects on memory is novel.

A strength of the study is that it uses well-defined and elegant optogenetic manipulations of distinct neural pathways in awake-behaving mice combined with in vivo recordings, which allows the authors to directly manipulate and monitor synaptic strength and memory.

The conclusions of this paper are mostly well supported by the data, but there are some aspects that should be resolved:

1. The experimental design for assessing the effects of applying HFS 24 h after conditioning should be clarified, and it should be re-evaluated which experimental groups can be compared and how. The experimental schemes in Figs. 1 and 3 (and Fig. 4e and extended data 4a,b) show that one group of animals was subjected to retrieval in the test context at 24 h, then received HFS, which was then followed by a second retrieval session. With this design, it remains unclear what the HFS impacts when it is delivered between these two 24 h memory retrieval sessions. It would be nice to see these data parsed out in a clean experimental design for all experiments (in Figs 1, 3, and 4), that means 4 groups with different treatments that are all tested only once at 24 h, and the appropriate statistical tests (ANOVA). This would also avoid repeating data in different panels for different pairwise comparisons (Fig 1, Fig 3, Fig 4, and extended Fig 4).

2. The final experiment (Fig. 5a-c, extended data 5c) combines behavioral assessments with in vivo LFP recordings before and 24 h after hetero-HFS. While this experiment is demanding, it seems a bit underpowered and not well-controlled. It would be critical to know if LFPs change over 24 h in animals in which memory is not altered by HFS, and to see correlations between memory performance and LFP changes, as two animals displayed low freezing levels. Also, the slice experiments (Fig. 5d-f) are not well aligned with the in vivo experiments (juvenile animals, electrical vs. opto stimulation, different HFS protocols, timescale of hours). They would suggest that thalamo-LA potentiation occurs directly after learning+HFS (which could be tested) and is maintained over 24 h.

3. The statistical analyses need to be clarified. All statements should be supported with statistical testing (e.g. extended data 5c, pg 7 stats are missing). The specific tests should be clearly stated throughout. For ANOVAs, the post-hoc tests and their outcomes should be stated. In some cases, 2-way ANOVAs were performed, but it seems there is only one independent variable, calling for one-way ANOVA.

4. There are a number of details in the methods and procedures that need to be elaborated on and clarified for the reader. All of them will be listed in the recommendations to the authors.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Summary:

In this study, Faress and colleagues investigated the differential contributions of Hebbian and non-hebbian plasticity to long-term memory. For this, the authors relied on in vivo optogenetic manipulations of thalamic (Th) and cortical (Ctx) inputs to the lateral amygdala (LA), a circuit whose role in associative memories is well established. The authors first begin by demonstrating that following a weak association protocol (also involving opto stimulation of the Th input) high-frequency stimulation (HFS) of the Th input induces robust conditioned responses (CR) 24 hours later. The authors then use two excitatory opsins to independently manipulate Ctx and Th inputs to the LA. They show that by delivering HFS of the Ctx input, LTP can be observed at Th-LA inputs which is accompanied by long-lasting memory effects.

Strengths:

Overall, the study addresses an important scientific question and could potentially result in a very valuable contribution to the field. The combination of in vivo electrophysiology with optogenetic manipulations of individual input sources to the LA is attractive.

Weaknesses:

While the methods employed in this study are attractive, they are also associated with major weaknesses. In particular, the manuscript lacks convincing validation and sufficient controls. Specific comments are included in the "Recommendations for the authors" section.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

Information transfer between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex is thought to be critical for spatial working memory, but most of the prior evidence for this hypothesis is correlational. This study attempts to test this causally by linking trial start times to theta-band coherence between these two structures. The authors find that trials initiated during periods of high coherence led to a dramatic improvement in performance. This applied not only to a spatial working memory task, but also to a cue-guided navigation task, suggesting that coherence in these regions may be a signature of a heightened attentional or preparatory state. The authors supplement this behavioral result with electrophysiological recordings to test whether the ventral midline thalamus is likely to mediate hippocampal-prefrontal coherence.

Strengths:

This study demonstrates a striking behavioral effect; by changing the moment at which a trial is initiated, performance on a spatial working memory task improves dramatically, from around 80% correct to over 90% correct. A smaller but nonetheless robust increase in accuracy was also seen in a texture discrimination task. Therefore, prefrontal-hippocampal synchronization in the theta band may not only be important for spatial navigation but may also be associated with improved performance in a range of tasks. If these results can be replicated using noninvasive EEG, it would open up a powerful avenue for modulating human behavior.

Weaknesses:

Ventral midline thalamic nuclei, such as reuniens, have reciprocal projections to both the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus and are therefore well-situated to mediate theta-band interactions between these structures. However, alternative mechanisms cannot be ruled out by the results of this study. For example, theta rhythms are globally coherent across the rodent hippocampus, and the ventral hippocampus projects directly to the prefrontal cortex. Theta propagation may depend on this pathway, and may only be passively inherited by VMT.

The optogenetic manipulations are intended to show that theta in VMT propagates to PFC and also affects HPC-PFC coherence. However, the "theta" induced by driving thalamic neurons at 7 Hz is extremely artificial. To demonstrate that VMT is causally involved in coordinating activity across HPC and PFC, it would have been better to optogenetically inhibit, rather than excite, these nuclei. If the authors were able to show that the natural occurrence of theta in PFC depends on activity in VMT, that would be a much more convincing test of their hypothesis.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

A number of previous reports have demonstrated that theta synchrony between the hippocampus (HPC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) is associated with correct performance on spatial working memory tasks. The main goal of the current study is to examine this relationship by initiating trials either randomly (as is typically done) or during periods of high or low PFC-HPC coherence. To this end, they develop a 'brain-machine interface' (BMI) that provides real-time estimates of PFC-HPC theta coherence, which are then used to control trial onset using an automated figure-eight maze. Their main finding is that choice accuracy is significantly higher on trials initiated when theta coherence is high whereas performance on low coherence trials does not differ from randomly initiated control trials. They also observe a similar result using a non-working memory task in the same maze.

Overall the main experiments (Figures 1-4) are well designed and the BMI approach is convincingly validated. There are also appropriate controls and analyses to rule out behavioral confounds and the results clearly presented. The idea of triggering trial onset based on brain activity is an interesting idea and helps to examine how extremes in the distribution of brain states are associated with behavior, something that might be more difficult to examine if trials are initiated randomly. As such, the BMI is an interesting approach for studying the neuronal basis of behavior that could potentially be applied beyond the particular field of the study, something the authors could perhaps have elaborated on more.

That being said, although the authors have elegantly revealed an association between PFC-HPC theta synchrony and behavior using their BMI approach, it is not apparent whether these results add substantially to previous reports of similar associations, including from the author's own work. The authors sometimes seem to claim that they do; for example, in the discussion, after describing previous studies that reported an association between PFC-HPC theta synchrony and behavior, they raise the reasonable question "did mPFC-hippocampal theta coherence lead to, or coincide with, correct choice outcomes?" What they subsequently write gives the impression that their study has somehow addressed the question, whereas in fact their results still leave this question open. For example, it is entirely possible that during high-coherence trials an unobserved neural process is influencing both coherence and task performance. The authors could have made a more convincing case as to why their correlative results go beyond similar findings from previous studies, perhaps by including additional analysis to strengthen their case.

Sometimes, the authors also seem to suggest that their results establish a causal relationship between synchrony and behavior, for example when they say that they have "demonstrated for the first time that strong mPFC-hippocampal theta coherence ENHANCES memory-guided choice" (line 557, my emphasis). However, causal manipulations of PFC-HPC synchrony would be required to make such claims. I am not suggesting that the lack of such data is necessarily a weakness of the study, only that causal claims are not supported by the author's results.

In addition to the behavioral results described above, the authors also examine how HPC-PFC synchrony modulates synchrony with the ventromedial thalamus (VMT; Figure 5) and how optogenetic modulation of the VMT influences PFC-HPC synchrony (Figure 6). However, these results feel somewhat more preliminary and their relationship to the other findings in the manuscript is not always clear. For example, given that the authors demonstrate that "Prefrontal-hippocampal theta synchronization modulates prefrontal-thalamic interactions" (Figure 5) I would rather have expected the authors to manipulate HPC and/or PFC and see how this affects VMT in Figure 6. It is also difficult to draw strong conclusions about the effects of optogenetic VMT stimulation since the results presented by the authors come from only 2 rats (Figure 6D-K) and therefore feel somewhat anecdotal. I could also not find any statistical test supporting the increase in the proportion of phase-locked neurons during high theta states shown in Figure 5K.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

Stout et al investigate the link between prefrontal-hippocampal (PFC-HPC) theta-band coherence and accurate decision-making in spatial decision-making tasks. Previous studies show that PFC-HPC theta coherence positively correlates with learning of these tasks and correct decisions but the nature of this relation relies on correlations that cannot show whether coherence leads, coincides, or is a consequence of decision making. To investigate more precisely this link, the authors devise a novel paradigm. In this paradigm, the rat is blocked during a delay period preceding its choice and they control on a trial-by-trial basis the level of PFC-HPC theta coherence prior to the decision by allowing the rat to access the choice point only at a time when coherence reaches above or below a threshold. The design of the paradigm is very nicely controlled thanks in particular to the trial-by-trial matching of delay period durations which is crucial for the working memory task. Moreover, the behaviour of the animal is strongly similar during high and low coherence periods which bolsters the specificity of the author's interpretation. Thanks to this approach, the authors clearly demonstrate that high theta coherence prior to choice-making is strongly predictive of better decision-making both in working memory and a cue-guided version of the task.

This novel paradigm provides an improvement in the level of experimental control to analyse the coherence/choice link but the exact interpretation of the results it yields is not entirely clear in the current manuscript. Using the PFC-HPC theta coherence during the delay period to the gate when the rat accesses the choice zone clearly separates this coherence from the behavioural decision itself. This provides convincing support for the idea that PFC-HPC theta coherence prior to the behavioural decision is related to correct decision-making and is not simply temporally coincidental or a consequence of the decision output. It does not however substantially increase the weight of evidence in favour of a causal link between theta coherence and correct decisions as suggested in the abstract ("PFC-HPC theta synchronization leads to correct choices"). Indeed, the paradigm does not de-correlate PFC-HPC theta synchronization from other neurophysiological variables such as neuromodulation, arousal, synchrony with other areas, etc that could be playing the true causal role in modulating decision-making.

The question of the link between the manuscript's findings and causal involvement of PFC-HPC dialogue is interestingly highlighted by the author's unexpected result showing that their paradigm reveals a link between theta coherence even in a sensory-driven version of the task. As the authors point out, results based on muscimol inhibition have shown that neither PFC nor HPC, nor the ventral midline thalamus, that mediates communication between the two, are involved in this task. This raises the question of why coherence between two areas is predictive of choice accuracy when neither area appears to be causally involved. The manuscript does not discuss the possibility that these results could imply that theta coherence is not in fact a good causal indicator. As an illustrative example, it could be linked for example with neuromodulation (ie dopamine, see Benchenane et al, 2010) which itself causally modifies the choice process. In this case, coherence would be an excellent predictor of accuracy (as the authors show) without implying a causally important information exchange between the two regions, since inhibiting these regions is without effect.

Altogether, this novel paradigm provides finer control to analyse the role of theta coherence in behaviour. This allows pinpointing of interesting cases in which coherence increases during correct task performance although it may have at least an indirect causal role. This opens up the possibility of interrogating when inter-area synchrony is associated with information transfer and when this information is then used to drive behavioural decisions.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This is a descriptive study of membrane excitability and Na+ and K+ current amplitudes of sympathetic motor neurons in culture. The main findings of the study are that neurons isolated from aged animals show increased membrane excitability manifested as increased firing rates in response to electrical stimulation and changes in related membrane properties including depolarized resting membrane potential, increased rheobase, and spontaneous firing. By contrast, neuron cultures from young mice show little to no spontaneous firing and relatively low firing rates in response to current injection. These changes in excitability correlate with significant reductions in the magnitude of KCNQ currents in aged neurons compared to young neurons. Treating cultures with the immunosuppressive drug, rapamycin, which has known antiaging effects in model animals appears to reverse the firing rates in aged neurons and enhance KCNQ current. The authors conclude that aging promotes hyperexcitability of sympathetic motor neurons.

The electrophysiological cataloging of the neuronal properties is generally well done, and the experiments are performed using perforated patch recordings which preserve the internal constituents of neurons, providing confidence that the effects seen are not due to washout of regulators from the cells. The main weakness is that this study is a descriptive tabulation of changes in the electrophysiology of neurons in culture, and the effects shown are correlative rather than establishing causality. It is difficult to know from the data presented whether the changes in KCNQ channels are in fact directly responsible for the observed changes in membrane excitability. Furthermore, a notable omission seems to be the analysis of Ca2+ currents which have been widely linked to alterations in membrane properties in aging. As well, additional experiments in slice cultures would provide greater significance on the potential relevance of the findings for intact preparations. Finally, experiments using KCNQ blockers and activators could provide greater relevance that the observed changes in KCNQ are indeed connected to changes in membrane excitability.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> The authors study age-related changes in the excitability and firing properties of sympathetic neurons, which they ascribe to age-related changes in the expression of KCNQ (Kv7, "M-type") K+ currents in rodent sympathetic neurons, whose regulation by GPCRs has been most thoroughly studied for over 40 years. The authors suggest the ingestion of rapamycin may partially reverse the age-related decrease in M-channel expression. With the rapamycin part included, it is unclear how this work will impact the field of age-related neuronal dysfunction, as the mechanistic information is not strong.

Strengths:<br /> The strengths include the rigor of the current-clamp and voltage-clamp experiments, the lovely, crisp presentation of the data, and the expert statistics. The separation of neurons into tonic, phasic, and adapting classes is also interesting, and informative. The writing is also elegant, and crisp. The above is especially true of the manuscript up until the part dealing with the effects of rapamycin, which becomes less compelling.

Weaknesses:<br /> Where the manuscript becomes less compelling is in the rapamycin section, which does not provide much in the way of mechanistic insights. As such, the effect is more of an epi-phenomenon of unclear insight, and the authors cannot ascribe a signaling mechanism to it that is supported by data. Thus, this latter part rather undermines the overall impact and central advance of the manuscript. The problem is exacerbated by the controversial and anecdotal nature of the entire mTor/aging field, some of whose findings have very unfortunately had to be recently retracted.

I would strongly recommend to the authors that they end the manuscript with their analysis of the role of M current/KCNQ channels in the numerous age-related changes in sympathetic neuron function that they elegantly report, and save the rapamycin, and possible mTor action, for a separate line of inquiry that the authors could develop in a more thorough and scholarly way.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> This research shows compelling and detailed evidence showing that aging influences intrinsic membrane properties of peripheral sympathetic motor neurons such that they become more excitable. Furthermore, the authors present convincing evidence that the oral administration of the anti-aging drug Rapamycin partially reversed hyperexcitability in aged neurons. This study also investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying age-associated hyperexcitability in mouse sympathetic motor neurons. In that regard, the authors found an age-associated reduction of an outward current having properties similar to KCNQ2/Q3 potassium current. They suggested a reduction of KCNQ2/Q3 current density in aged neurons as a potential mechanism behind their overactivity.

Strengths:<br /> Detailed and rigorous analysis of electrical responses of peripheral sympathetic motor neurons using electrophysiology (perforated patch and whole-cell recordings). Most of the conclusions of this paper are well supported by the data.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1) The identity of the age-associated reduced current as KCNQ2/Q3 is not corroborated by pharmacology (blocking the current with the specific blocker XE-991).<br /> 2) The manuscript does not include a direct test of the reduction of KCNQ current as the mechanism behind age-induced hyperexcitability.

Joint Public Review:

In the present manuscript, Abele et al use Salmonella strains modified to robustly induce one of two different types of regulated cell death, pyroptosis or apoptosis in all cell types to assess the role of pyroptosis versus apoptosis in systemic versus intestinal epithelial pathogen clearance. They demonstrate that in systemic spread, which requires growth in macrophages, pyroptosis is required to eliminate Salmonella, while in intestinal epithelial cells (IEC), extrusion of the infected cell into the intestinal lumen induced by apoptosis or pyroptosis is sufficient for early pathogen restriction. The methods used in these studies are thorough and well controlled and lead to robust results, that mostly support the conclusions. The impact on the field is considered minor as the observations are somewhat redundant with previous observations and and not generalizable due to cited evidence of different outcomes in other models of infection and a relatively artificial study system that does not permit the assessment of later timepoints in infection due to rapid clearance. This excludes the study of later effects of differences between pyroptosis and apoptosis in IEC such as i.e. IL-18 and eicosanoid release, which are only observed in the former and can have effects later in infection.

Joint Public Review:

In this manuscript, Kipfer et al describe a method for a fast and accurate SARS-CoV2 rescue and mutagenesis. This work is based on a published method termed ISA (infectious subgenomic amplicons), in which partially overlapping DNA fragments covering the entire viral genome and additional 5' and 3' sequences are transfected into mammalian cell lines. These DNA fragments recombine in the cells, express the full length viral genomic RNA and launch replication and rescue of infectious virus.

CLEVER, the method described here significantly improves on the ISA method to generate infectious SARS-CoV2, making it widely useful to the virology community.

Specifically, the strengths of this method are:<br /> 1) The successful use of various cell lines and transfection methods.<br /> 2) Generation of a four-fragment system, which significantly improves the method efficiency due to lower number of required recombination events.<br /> 3) Flexibility in choice of overlapping sequences, making this system more versatile.<br /> 4) The authors demonstrated how this system can be used to introduce point mutations as well as insertion of a tag and deletion of a viral gene.<br /> 5) Fast-tracking generation of infectious virus directly from RNA of clinical isolates by RT-PCR, without the need for cloning the fragments or using synthetic sequences.<br /> 6) The authors further expanded this method to work on additional plus-strand RNA viruses beyond SARS-CoV-2 (CHIKV, DENV)

The manuscript clearly presents the findings, and the proof-of-concept experiments are well designed.

Overall, this is a very useful method for SARS-CoV2 research. Importantly, it can be applicable to many other viruses, speeding up the response to newly emerging viruses than threaten the public health.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

This manuscript provides important evidence on the association between sleep regularity and mortality in the UK Biobank, which is a popular topic in recent sleep and circadian research in population-based studies. The analysis reported robust associations between sleep irregularity and increased total, CVD and cancer mortality, and provided evidence to support the role of sleep and circadian health in disease progression and longevity in human populations. The Sleep Regularity Index (SRI) used in this study is a novel metric that quantifies the consistency in rest-activity rhythms over consecutive 24 hour periods, thus providing objective assessment of potential circadian disruption. The study is based on a large accelerometer study with validated follow-up of incident diseases and deaths. The data quality and large sample size strengthen the credibility of the conclusion. Overall, the analyses are appropriately done and the manuscript is clearly written.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

This interesting research commendably revealed irregular sleep-wake patterns are associated with higher mortality risk. However, as authors acknowledged, the analysis can not to accurately identify the cause and effect. In my opinion, the causality is important for this topic, cuz, sleep regularity and health (e.g. chronic disease) were long-term simultaneous status. especially given the participants are older. I suggest that the author could utilize MR analysis to find out for more evidence.

Joint Public Review:

In this study by Porter et al reports on outcomes from a small, open-label, pilot randomized clinical trial comparing dornase-alfa to the best available care in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia. As the number of randomized participants is small, investigators describe also a contemporary cohort of controls and the study concludes about decrease of inflammation (reflected by CRP levels) after 7 days of treatment but no other statistically significant clinical benefit.

Suggestions to the authors:

• Please re-analyze findings by omitting from all Tables and Figures all data of comparators who were not randomized (BAC). I understand the difficulties of running this trial but the results of excess reduction of mortality do not allow the publication of a trial where comparators do not come from the randomized patient population.<br /> • The presentation remains confusing and the manuscript should be critically revised for clarity. There is a repetition of methods (e.g. lines 176-187 repeat 160-175) and redundant results (e.g. Figure S2, Table 3). At Table 4: the authors should select one method of illustration for lab results, either Table or figure, without repetitions<br /> • Regarding inclusion criteria, it is unclear whether high radiological suspicion is sufficient for inclusion or whether PCR based confirmation is required in all instances (differences in wording between lines 153 and 191), and under which oxygen requirements (lines 155 and 192)<br /> • Table 1 should be merged with Table S2 and a better description of cohort baseline severity (P/F, SOFA, APACHE, organ support, number of patients in each point of the WHO severity score) and treatments should be made available

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

The manuscript by Hage et al. presents interesting results from a foraging behavior in Marmosets that explores the interactions of saccade and lick vigor with pupil dilation and performance as well as a marginal value theory and foraging theory-inspired value-based decision-making model thereof. The results are generally robust and carefully presented and analyses, particularly of vigor, are carefully executed.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Hage et al examine how the foraging behavior of marmoset monkeys in a laboratory setting systematically takes into account the reward value and anticipated effort cost associated with the acquisition and consumption of food. In an interesting comprehensive framework, the authors study how experimental and natural variation of these factors affect both the decisions and actions necessary to gather and accumulate food, as well as the actions necessary to consume the food.

The manuscript proposes a computational model of how the monkeys may guide all these aspects of behavior, by maximizing a food capture rate that trades off the food that can be gathered with the effort and duration of the underlying actions. They use this model to derive qualitative predictions for how monkeys should react to an increase in the effort associated with food consumption: Monkeys should work longer before deciding to consume the accumulated food, but should move more slowly. The model also predicts that monkeys should show a different reaction to an increase in reward value of the food, also working longer but moving faster. The authors test these predictions in an interesting experimental setup that requires monkeys to collect small increments of food rewards for successful eye movements to targets. The monkeys can decide freely when to interrupt work and consume the accumulated food, and the authors measure the speed of the eye movements involved in the food acquisition as well as the tongue movements involved in the food consumption.

By and large, the behavioral findings fall in line with the qualitative model predictions: When the effort involved in food consumption increases, monkeys collect more food before deciding to consume it, and they move slower both during food acquisition and food consumption. In a second test, the authors approximate the effects of reward value of the food at stake, by comparing monkey behavior during different days with natural variations in body weight. These quasi-experimental increases in the reward value of food also lead to longer work times before consumption, but to faster movements during food consumption. Finally, the authors show that these effects correlate with pupil size, with pupils dilating more for low-effort foraging actions with increased saccade speed and decreased work duration. The authors conclude that the effort associated with anticipated actions can lead to changes in global brain state that simultaneously affect decisions and action vigor.

The paper proposes an interesting model for how one unified action policy may simultaneously affect multiple types of decisions and movements involved in foraging. The methods employed to measure behavior and test these predictions are generally sound, and the paper is well written.

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:<br /> In this research article, the authors utilized the zebrafish embryo to explore the idea that two different cell types emerge with different morphodynamics from the floor of the dorsal aorta based on their apicobasal polarity establishment. The hypothesis that the apical-luminal polarity of the membrane could be maintained after EHT and confer different functionality to the cell is exciting, however, this could not be established. There is a general lack of data supporting several of the main statements and conclusions. In addition, the manuscript is difficult to follow and needs refinement. We present below some questions and suggestions with the goal of guiding the authors to improve the manuscript and solidify their findings.

Strengths:<br /> New transgenic zebrafish lines developed. Challenging imaging.

Weaknesses:<br /> 1. The authors conclude that the truncated version of Podxl2 fused to a fluorophore is enriched within the apical site of the cell. However, based on the images provided, an alternative interpretation is that the portion of the membrane within the apical side is less stretched than in the luminal side, and therefore the fluorophore is more concentrated and easier to identify by confocal. This alternative interpretation is also supported by data presented later in the paper where the authors demonstrate that the early HE is not polarized (membranes are not under tension and stretched yet). Could the authors confirm their interpretation with a different technique/marker like TEM?

2. Could the authors confirm that the engulfed membranes are vacuoles as they claimed, using, for example, TEM? Why is it concluded that "these vacuoles appear to emanate from the abluminal membrane (facing the sub-aortic space) and not from the lumen?" This is not clear from the data presented.

3. It is unclear why the authors conclude that "their dynamics appears to depend on the activity of aquaporins and it is very possible that aquaporins are active in zebrafish too, although rather in EHT cells late in their emergence and/or in post-EHT cells, for water chase and vacuolar regression as proposed in our model (Figure 1 - figure supplement 1B)." In our opinion, these figures do not confirm this statement.

4. Could the authors prove and show data for their conclusions "We observed that both EHT pol+ and EHT pol- cells divide during the emergence"; "both EHT pol+ and EHT pol- cells express reporters driven by the hematopoietic marker CD41 (data not shown), which indicates that they are both endowed with hematopoietic potential"; and "the full recovery of their respective morphodynamic characteristics (not shown)?".

5. The authors do not demonstrate the conclusion traced from Fig. 2B. Is there a fusion of the vacuoles to the apical side in the EHT pol+ cells? Do the cells inheriting less vacuoles result in pol- EHT? It looks like the legend for Fig. 2-fig supp is missing.

6. The title of the paper "Tuning apico-basal polarity and junctional recycling in the hemogenic endothelium orchestrates pre-hematopoietic stem cell emergence complexity" could be interpreted as functional heterogeneity within the HSCs, which is not demonstrated in this work. A more conservative title denoting that there are two types of EHT from the DA could avoid misinterpretations and be more appropriate.

7. There are several conclusions not supported by data: "Finally, we have estimated that the ratio between EHT pol+ and EHT pol- cells is of approximately 2/1". "We observed that both EHT pol+ and EHT pol- cells divide during the emergence and remain with their respective morphological characteristics". "We also observed that both EHT pol+ and EHT pol- cells express reporters driven by the hematopoietic marker CD41 (data not shown), which indicates that they are both endowed with hematopoietic potential." These conclusions are key in the paper, and therefore they should be supported by data.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

In this study, Torcq and colleagues make careful observations of the cellular morphology of haemogenic endothelium undergoing endothelial to haematopoietic transition (EHT) to become stem cells, using the zebrafish model. To achieve this, they used an extensive array of transgenic lines driving fluorescent markers, markers of apico-basal polarity (podocalixin-FP fusions), or tight junction markers (jamb-FP fusions). The use of the runx truncation to block native Runx1 only in endothelial cells is an elegant tool to achieve something akin to tissue-specific deletion of Runx1. Overall, the imaging data is of excellent quality. They demonstrate that differences in apico-basal polarity are strongly associated with different cellular morphologies of cells undergoing EHT from HE (EHT pol- and EHT pol+) which raises the exciting possibility that these morphological differences reflect the heterogeneity of HE (and therefore HSCs) at a very early stage. They then overexpress a truncated form of Runx1 (just the runt domain) to block Runx1 function and show that more HE cells abort EHT and remain associated with the embryonic dorsal aorta. They identify pard3aa and pard3ab as potential regulators of cell polarity. However, despite showing that loss of runx1 function leads to (late) decreases in the expression of these genes, no evidence for their role in EHT is presented. The FRAP experiments and the 2d-cartography, albeit very elegant, are difficult to interpret and not very clearly described throughout the text, making interpretation difficult for someone less familiar with the techniques. Finally, while it is clear that ArhGEF11 is playing an important role in defining cell shapes and junctions between cells during EHT, there is very little statistical evidence to support the limited data presented in the (very beautiful) images.

There is a sense that this work is both overwhelming in terms of the sheer amount of imaging data, and the work behind it to generate all the lines they required, and at the same time that there is very little evidence supporting the assertion that pard3 (and even ArhGEF11) are important mediators of cell morphology and cell fate in the context of EHT. For instance, the pard3 expression data, and levels after blocking runx1 (part of Figure 3 and Figure 4) don't particularly add to the manuscript beyond indicating that the pard3 genes are regulated by Runx1.

Weaknesses<br /> The writing style is quite convoluted and could be simplified for clarity. For example, there is plenty of discussion and speculation throughout the presentation of the results. A clearer separation of the results from this speculation/discussion would help with understanding. Figures are frequently presented out of order in the text; modifying the figures to accommodate the flow of the text (or the other way around) - would make it much easier to follow the narrative. While the evidence for the different cellular morphologies of cells undergoing EHT is strong, the main claim (or at least the title of the manuscript) that tuning apico-basal polarity and junctional recycling orchestrate stem cell emergence complexity is not well supported by the data.