Erratum: Surveillance-Activated Defenses Block the ROS-Induced Mitochondrial Unfolded Protein Response (PLoS Genetics (2013) 9:3 (e1003346) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003346)

Abstract

This Research Article reports that down-regulation of pifk-1 by RNAi strongly reduces paraquat induced expression of the UPRmt reporter gene Phsp-6::gfp. In their research following this publication, the authors observed that several newly generated deletion mutants of pifk-1 did not reproduce the RNAi phenotype. Further investigation of this issue revealed that the bacterial pifk-1 RNAi stock used in this study, in addition to the pifk-1 RNAi plasmid, contained a minor contamination (<5%) of a second plasmid, GFP::L4440. Due to its low concentration, this contaminating plasmid was not detected in the routine Sanger sequencing. The authors suspect that the contamination was introduced into the pifk-1 RNAi stock solution during replication of the bacterial RNAi clone, since they could not identify it in the original copy of the purchased ORFeome RNAi library. The authors confirmed by PCR analysis that the RNAi of all other 54 screening positive genes identified in their screen is free of a similar contamination. pifk-1 RNAi performed with a purified stock failed to prevent the induction of Phsp-6::gfp with paraquat, suggesting that pifk-1 is not a candidate gene involved in paraquat-induced UPRmt. As a consequence of these new findings, the authors withdraw all results obtained with pifk-1 RNAi in this publication and apologize for this mistake. All authors agree to the text of the correction as published here.