BioMed Research International has retracted the article titled “Lentivirus-Mediated siRNA Targeting ER-α Inhibits Tumorigenesis and Induces Apoptosis in Hepatocarcinoma Cells” [1] due to an error in the gene targeting.
It was raised to our attention [2] that the siRNA sequence said to target ER-α (estrogen receptor alpha), 5′ − GCCTTACAATGTACA GCAGAA − 3′, instead targets the similarly named but unrelated gene ERAL1 (Era Like 12S Mitochondrial RRNA Chaperone 1) [3].
Over 300 words, including the discussion of the use of siRNA, overlap with an article by other authors that was not cited, which also studied lentivirus-mediated RNA inference in hepatocarcinoma cells [4]. The file properties show the manuscript was edited by someone who is not one of the authors. The authors could not be contacted.
References
- 1.Jiang P., Cao J., Bai W.-H. Lentivirus-Mediated siRNA Targeting ER-α Inhibits Tumorigenesis and Induces Apoptosis in Hepatocarcinoma Cells. BioMed Research International. 2015;2015:8. doi: 10.1155/2015/490681.490681 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] [Retracted]
- 2.Labbé C., Grima N., Gautier T., Favier B., Byrne J. A. Semi-automated fact-checking of nucleotide sequence reagents in biomedical research publications: the seek & Blastn tool. PLoS One. 2019;14(3, article e0213266) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213266. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.ERAL1 Gene. GeneCards. https://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=ERAL1.
- 4.Qin J., Xu Y., Li X., et al. Effects of lentiviral-mediated Foxp1 and Foxq1 RNAi on the hepatocarcinoma cell. Experimental and Molecular Pathology. 2014;96(1):1–8. doi: 10.1016/j.yexmp.2013.10.015. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]