Genes & Development 23: 118–132 (2009)
“In agreement with all authors, we herewith retract our above-mentioned article. In this article, we identified PRMT1 as a novel transcriptional corepressor of IFN-induced STAT1 target genes that cooperates with PIAS1. In the process of following up these findings, researchers in the group of the corresponding author recently uncovered that the original experimental data points of a subset of quantitative PCR (qPCR) results were intentionally falsified by the first author. Therefore, the reported results of Figures 3 (B and C) and 6 (B and C) and Supplemental Figures S7, S11B, and S12 are not supported by the raw qPCR data. As a consequence, we cannot maintain the central conclusions of our paper that PIAS1 is recruited to STAT1 target gene promoters in a PRMT1- and methylation-dependent manner; that PIAS1 methylation leads to promoter release of STAT1 from a subset of target genes and, consequently, to transcriptional repression; and that PRMT4 and PRMT6 do not influence PIAS1-dependent STAT1 target genes. Other results of the paper (Figs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7) and their conclusions remain unaffected.
“We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this scientific misconduct might have caused.”