Since we completed this study ten years ago, I have changed labs twice and am unable to locate the original notebook. I have contacted the paper's first author asking for the original scans of the blot, who has not yet responded to my requests. In the meanwhile, I have carefully reviewed the western blots in question. While these blots have been compressed to fit the space, I do not believe there has been a deliberate attempt to slice or rearrange the lanes. The standard operating procedure in our lab is to scan the entire blot, determine the density, and then present a representative blot in the manuscript. I am, however, concerned about the potential duplication of the confocal image in figure 6A. I do not want any of our papers published with suspected data, so I have decided to accept the decision to retract the paper. If we trace the notebook, I will review all the data again and send it to the editor. The paper's basic findings will not be significantly altered even if the figures in question were omitted from the paper. Therefore, I plan on repeating these experiments and republishing the data when validated. I sincerely apologize to the editors, reviewers, and the scientific community for the inconveniences resulting from this article's publication and subsequent retraction.
-SN