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Time for a quick roundup of some of the conversations happening regarding F1000-evaluated papers. All evaluations in this post are free to access without a subscription.

First, Oscar Marin from Alicante points out that a paper in Nature that he selected and evaluated has some potential irregularities in the figures. The paper in question purports to show that Ephrin B proteins are essential for the mechanism of Reelin signalling (due to some bizarreness in Nature‘s website, that link doesn’t show the comments. Try this link, or jump straight to Nature editor Noah Gray’s comment). Reelin is behind a neurodevelopmental disorder first described in 1951, but how the protein signalled beyond its two receptors was not known. This paper appeared to have found a downstream effector in Ephrin B, but there must surely be some doubt cast on the authors’ findings, even if the irregularity in the figures arose from an honest mistake. It’s good to see people commenting on published articles, especially bringing to light potential problems.

Carl Victor Lundin at Stanford wants us to know about a paper published parallel to one he evaluated, about an α-tubulin acetyltransferase (αTAT). The parallel paper–incidentally from the group of F1000 Member Maxence Nachury, also at Stanford makes a link between tubulin acetylation and cilium assembly, with implications for touch sensing in nematodes. You can read the evaluation of that paper, too.

Yamini Dalal at the National Cancer Institute follows up on her own evaluation of the mechanism by CpG methylation is faithfully transmitted to the daughter strand after DNA replication, with links to recent supporting papers.

An author of an evaluated paper responds to an evaluation: Alvaro Munoz at the Baylor College of Medicine emphasizes that measuring the ratio of ATP to nitric oxide in urine might be a good way of detecting bladder dysfunction–whether underactive or overactive. Thanks to Rodolfo Testa in our Pharmacology & Drug discovery Faculty for spotting that one.

Finally,

“Maybe I am wrong, but my memories of textbooks in experimental ecology recall that one manipulated system and a single control are not enough to test hypotheses of any kind in an experimental fashion,” writes Nando Boero of the Universita’ del Salento.

He is referring to a paper in Science, in which two halves of an artifcially divided lake in Northern Wisconsin are compared: one was stocked with top predators (adult largemouth bass) over three years while the other was monitored simultaneously as a reference ecosystem. Variability in the ecosystem of the manipulated lake preceded a wholesale ecological regime change, serving as an early warning system. Nando does admit it is a ‘fine paper’, and thanks are due to Graeme Cumming and Ruben Sommaruga for evaluating it initially.