RETRACTION
Volume 76, no. 13, p. 6815–6824, 2002. We recently noticed that some figures contained Northern and Western blot images comprising spliced lanes and nonuniform contrast adjustments that were not indicated as such. Upon closer inspection of the published figures and the original material that was still available, we also realized that some lanes of one Western blot and one Northern blot were reused in assembling different figures. In addition, some figures presented signs of inappropriate manipulation. The details of these issues are as follows.
Page 6818: In Fig. 3B, lower panel, the 5th lane is a duplication and inversion of the 2nd lane.
Pages 6819 and 6821: The first three lanes of Fig. 4B are reused in Fig. 6B.
Pages 6820 and 6821: Some lanes of Fig. 6D are reused in Fig. 5C. In Fig. 5C, 6C, and 6D, some lanes with background are duplicated.
Page 6821: In Fig. 6C, the contrast is not evenly adjusted. Figures 6C and 6D present spliced lanes that are not indicated as such.
While some of these issues were genuine mounting mistakes and could have been corrected by making new figures with the original blots, we could not retrieve all of the original data. Since the publication of the article, we have repeated the experiments and confirmed that its conclusion, P0 protein being a suppressor of RNA silencing, remains valid. Moreover, the data have also been confirmed independently by several other laboratories. Nonetheless, given the nature and extent of some of the manipulations, we decided that the best course of action is to retract this publication. S. Pfeffer was responsible for the mounting of the problematic figures and takes full responsibility for the errors that were made. We apologize for and deeply regret the errors in this publication.