Erratum to: J Assist Reprod Genet (2016) 33:581–588
DOI: 10.1007/s10815-016-0710-8
The authors acknowledge that portions of the text of their article were similar to several statements made in Professor Tetsuya Ishii’s Opinion article entitled “Germline genome-editing research and its socioethical implications”. (Trends Mol Med. 2015 Aug;21(8):473–81).
The three statements in question below appeared in the Discussion section of the Kang et al. paper and appear identical or modified with respect to wording or references used in the Opinion piece published by Professor Ishii, which should have been credited with a reference citation.
On page 585: Liang et al. showed that the efficiency of HDR of the β-globin gene was 4.7% (per injected zygote) and that the modified embryos displayed mosaicism in which wild-type cells and genetically modified cells coexisted [12].
On page 586: However, considering that the off-target effect is site dependent and that more specific strategies using more sophisticated enzymes and meticulous design of the guiding molecule have already been established [33–35], off-target mutagenesis may be minimized by optimizing the procedure [36]. Furthermore
On page 587: Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has already been used clinically in some countries to screen out human embryos with mutations responsible for genetic conditions such as thalassemia and spinal muscular atrophy. The clinical use of PGD appears to justify germline genome editing research because only embryos that contain no suspected mutations, but have undergone the physical intervention of embryonic cell biopsy for genetic testing, are used for embryo transfer
The authors sincerely apologize for these errors of omission in failing to cite the above statements as taken or modified from the publication in Trends Mol Med. (2015 Aug;21(8):473–81).
Footnotes
The online version of the original article can be found at 10.1007/s10815-016-0710-8