In the article “TNF-α Differentially Regulates Synaptic Plasticity in the Hippocampus and Spinal Cord by Microglia-Dependent Mechanisms after Peripheral Nerve Injury,” by Yong Liu, Li-Jun Zhou, Jun Wang, Dai Li, Wen-Jie Ren, Jiyun Peng, Xiao Wei, Ting Xu, Wen-Jun Xin, Rui-Ping Pang, Yong-Yong Li, Zhi-Hai Qin, Madhuvika Murugan, Mark P. Mattson, Long-Jun Wu, and Xian-Guo Liu, which appeared on pages 871–881 of the January 25, 2017 issue, readers have raised concerns about the similarity of Figures 3A and 4G, noting that the Western blots used in the panels seemed flipped.
Upon conducting a thorough investigation into the issue, the authors discovered that the similarity resulted from an unintentional error. Specifically, an author mistakenly selected an incorrect representative image for the Western blot (WB) results, scanning the wrong face of the same film used to generate Figure 3A, and incorrectly labeled the resulting image. The two figures in question originated from separate scans but were inadvertently taken from the same membrane.
A revised version of Figure 4G appears below. These errors do not affect the conclusions of the paper.
