The above article has been retracted by the journal. The retraction was made before the article reached its final form in the publication process. However, the authors' accepted manuscript, prior to copy editing, page layout and proofing, was made available online as a Reproduction Advance Publication on 20 October 2011.
The article has been retracted because:
Figure 1C is substantially similar to Fig. 5 in Cai K, Hua G, Ahmad S, Liang A, Han L, Wu C, Yang F & Yang L 2011 Action mechanism of inhibin α-subunit on the development of Sertoli cells and first wave of spermatogenesis in mice. PLoS ONE 6 e25585. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025585)
Bands in the P21 lane of Fig. 3 seem not to be adjacent to each other, and appear similar to bands in the INHA lane of Fig. 1C in the Reproduction article and Fig. 5 from the PLoS ONE paper, but with the right-hand P21 band rotated 180°.
The journal's ethical guidelines state that authors must ‘not submit the same or substantially similar material (data or text) as contained in any article, including review articles, that the author(s) have published previously’.
Additionally, the journal's policy on image manipulation states that ‘groupings of images from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, fields or exposures must be made explicit by the arrangement of the figure (e.g. using dividing lines) and in the text of the figure legend’.
The authors have responded to these concerns and apologised for the errors. The journal has reviewed the corrected figures supplied by the authors but has decided that, in view of the breach of the journal's ethical guidelines, the article should be retracted.
We apologise to the editors of PLoS ONE and to our readers.
