Correction: The paper by Yamamoto et al. (1998) that appeared in the March 15, 1998 issue failed to cite an earlier paper that reached similar conclusions. In particular, Kim et al. (1997) also analyzed knock-out mice lacking the protein repair enzyme l-isoaspartate methyltransferase and demonstrated the accumulation of altered proteins in several tissues, including brain, leading to the retardation of growth and fatal seizures. The authors were unaware of this work at the time of submitting their manuscript. They also apologize for the direct use of sentences from the introduction of a previous paper (Lowenson and Clarke, 1992) without appropriate citation.
Kim E, Lowenson JD, MacLaren DC, Clarke S, Young SG (1997) Deficiency of a protein-repair enzyme results in the accumulation of altered proteins, retardation of growth, and fatal seizures in mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94:6132–6137.
Lowenson JD, Clarke S (1992) Recognition ofd-aspartyl residues in polypeptides by the erythrocytel-isoaspartyl/d-aspartyl protein methyltransferase. J Biol Chem 267:5985–5995.
Yamamoto A, Takagi H, Kitamura D, Tatsuoka H, Nakano H, Kawano H, Kuroyanagi H, Yahagi Y, Kobayashi S, Koizumi K, Sakai T, Saito K, Chiba T, Kawamura K, Suzuki K, Watanabe T, Mori H, Shirasawa T (1998) Deficiency in protein l-isoaspartyl methyltransferase results in a fatal progressive epilepsy. J Neurosci 18:2063–2074.