Carcinogenesis is retracting the following paper following a joint research misconduct investigation by the Birmingham VA Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, USA.
Nandakumar, V. et al. (2011) Aberrant DNA hypermethylation patterns lead to transcriptional silencing of tumor suppressor genes in UVB-exposed skin and UVB-induced skin tumors of mice. Carcinogenesis, 32(4), 597–604.
In Figure 5, there are several instances in which bands are replicated but labelled to represent different experimental conditions. For example, the bands labeled P16INK4a ‘Ac-Histone H3’ and ‘MBD1’ are the same; the bands labeled P16INK4a ‘Ac-Histone H4 Input’ and ‘MBD1Input’ and ‘HDAC1 Input’ and RASSF1A ‘HDAC1Input’ appear to be identical.
In some cases, the bands are flipped (compare MeCP2 and HDAC-1 in Panel A). While the Input bands for Panel A are all the same, the Input is identical for the image shown at the bottom of Panel B—which is a different promoter region. There are no original data or records with which to clarify the identities of the input controls or experimental samples that are shown, or with which to validate the findings and conclusions drawn from this experiment.
This retraction is based on the unavailability of original data and records, the lack of replicate experiments that validate the published findings, and the ambiguous identification of many of the samples, treatments and controls.