The above article from The EMBO Journal, published online on 16 November 1998, has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Chief Editor and Head of Scientific Publications, EMBO, Bernd Pulverer, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The authors’ and editors’ statements are as follows.
Authors’ statement
The corresponding author was alerted through the PubPeer website to pixel pattern duplications in Figures 5B and 6I of this paper. The Figures address the identification of the 2b protein of cucumber mosaic virus as a viral suppressor of silencing.
The pixel pattern duplications originate from the incorrect use of image editing software to cover background marks. The image editing was done by O. Voinnet without the involvement or knowledge of other co-authors. It involves regions of Figures 5B (Mock/GFP probe and CMV/CXMRNA2 probe) and 6I (TXMV-2bΔ GFP probe) that are required for assessment of the data.
The identification of 2b as a suppressor of silencing was a valid interpretation of the original experiments, but the original data are not available for correction and the authors accept that integrity of the scientific literature requires retraction of the article. The silencing suppressor role of 2b has been confirmed in different laboratories. The analysis of the HCPro silencing suppressor in this paper is unaffected by the duplications in Figures 5B and 6I.
All authors concur with this statement and wish to apologize for having allowed the incorrect images to be published in The EMBO Journal.
Editors’ statement
We alert readers to the fact that a number of related papers are also subject to a corrigendum or to a retraction. At The EMBO Journal, these encompass:
References
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