Medical Sciences Retraction of “Endothelial expression of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 protects the murine heart and aorta from pressure overload by suppression of TGF-β signaling,” by Hong Wei, Djahida Bedja, Norimichi Koitabashi, Dongmei Xing, Jasper Chen, Karen Fox-Talbot, Rosanne Rouf, Shaoping Chen, Charles Steenbergen, John W. Harmon, Harry C. Dietz, Kathleen L. Gabrielson, David A. Kass, and Gregg L. Semenza, which was first published March 8, 2012; 10.1073/pnas.1202081109 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, E841–E850).
The undersigned authors note, “We are retracting this paper due to the following concerns with presentation of data in immunoblot assays of total and phosphorylated ERK1/2 in Fig. 4F and Fig. 4G. The first issue is that two different blots were used to analyze total and phosphorylated ERK1/2 in Fig. 4F, whereas it appears that the same blot was stripped and reused to analyze total and phosphorylated ERK1/2 in Fig. 4G. The second issue is that there appears to be splicing of lanes in the assay of phosphorylated ERK1/2 in Fig. 4F that was not indicated in the figure. Since the integrity of the data has been questioned and we have not been able to locate the raw data files from over 10 years ago, we request that the paper be retracted. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Charles Steenbergen, Harry C. Dietz, and Gregg L. Semenza