MEDICAL SCIENCES Retraction for “Impaired lipid metabolism by age-dependent DNA methylation alterations accelerates aging,” by Xin Li, Jiaqiang Wang, Leyun Wang, Guihai Feng, Gen Li, Meixin Yu, Yufei Li, Chao Liu, Xuewei Yuan, Guangxi Zang, Zhihuan Li, Ling Zhao, Hong Ouyang, Qingli Quan, Guangyu Wang, Charlotte Zhang, Oulan Li, Junkai Xiang, Jian-Kang Zhu, Wei Li, Qi Zhou, and Kang Zhang, which was first published February 6, 2020; 10.1073/pnas.1919403117 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 4328–4336).
The authors wish to note the following: “It came to our attention after publication that the fundus images in Fig. 3E and SI Appendix, Fig. S4C of our PNAS article were a duplication of the photos in a recent Aging Cell article (1). These photographs were generated by Dr. Daniel Chen and Dr. Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk in the course of conducting research exploring the effects of Elovl2 deficiency in the mouse eye at Dr. Kang Zhang’s laboratory at University of California San Diego. In the same time period, the authors of the PNAS paper were working at the same laboratory exploring the effects of the Elovl2 loss in the entire mouse body. While the two groups of researchers were working concurrently at Dr. Zhang’s University of California San Diego laboratory, the fundus photographs were inadvertently misidentified and mixed in with materials developed for the Elovl2 mouse strain in the PNAS paper, during the process of data organization and presentation. The similarities in genetic properties between the Elovl2 mouse strains contributed to the confusion and subsequent mix-up.
“We apologize to the scientific community for this inadvertent error. Despite the fact that this is an honest mistake and the inclusion of the erroneously misidentified photos did not affect the conclusions of the PNAS article nor the validity of the remaining data and findings in the paper, including all of the data generated from the laboratories of Drs. Qi Zhou, Wei Li, and Jian-Kang Zhu, who are unaccountable for this inadvertent error, we believe that a retraction is appropriate to prevent confusion among the scientific community. The affiliation of Dr. Xin Li needs to be corrected as University of California, San Diego, rather than Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.”
1. D. Chen, D. L. Chao, L. Rocha, M. Kolar, V. A. N. Huu, M. Krawczyk, M. Dasyani, T. Wang, M. Jafari, M. Jabari, K. D. Ross, A. Saghatelian, B. A. Hamilton, K. Zhang, D. Skowronska-Krawczyk, The lipid elongation enzyme ELOVL2 is a molecular regulator of aging in the retina. Aging Cell 19, e13100 (2020).