Figure 1A: duplication and vertical flip of a yeast strip (red boxes).
Could the authors please comment?
Same kind of problem as in Drake et al. 2010 and Perez-Castineira et al. 2011 from same group. How does it come?
Dear Sir,
We have contacted the editors at PNAS and given our explanations to the issues and concerns expressed by you. The editors have supported these explanations and have encouraged me to post this message to Pubpeer.
Thanks for your interest in our articles.
Kind regards
J. R. Pérez-Castiñeira
Dr. Péeres-Castineira, I would also like to understand how you can explain. Here we have two issues of obvious reuse and manipulation of data.
September 9, 2022 retraction. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2213841119
Biochemistry Retraction for “Functional complementation of yeast cytosolic pyrophosphatase by bacterial and plant H+-translocating pyrophosphatases” by José R. Pérez-Castiñeira, Rosa L. López-Marqués, José M. Villalba, Manuel Losada, and Aurelio Serrano, which was first published November 25, 2002; 10.1073/pnas.242625399 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99, 15914–15919). The authors note, “We are retracting this article due to concerns with three of the published figures. In Fig. 1A, there is a concern that the Galactose/YPC-1 panel and the Glucose/W303-1A panel show the same data, flipped vertically. In Fig. 1B, there is a concern of duplication between the two 5.1 bands and between the two 0.8 bands, in each case flipped vertically. There is also a concern of duplication of background data across the panel. In Fig. 5, there is a concern that the two IPP1 panels show the same data, flipped vertically. We believe that the overall conclusions of the paper remain valid. Unfortunately, it was impossible for us to find the original files after more than 20 years. Yeast mutant YPC1, as well as the plasmids and constructs described in the article, are freely available to any member of the scientific community that may require them, as they have been for the past 20 years. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
"In Fig. 1B, there is a concern of duplication between the two 5.1 bands and between the two 0.8 bands, in each case flipped vertically. There is also a concern of duplication of background data across the panel."
An appreciation for Figure 1B's artwork mentioned in the Retraction Notice. I did not try to mark it all.
Note that these duplications were not picked up with either ImageTwin or Forensically, showing the limitations of current software tools to detect duplications easily observed with the human eye.
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