Kenneth Briley Jr, Peter Prepiak, Miguel J. Dias, Jeanette Hahn and David Dubnau, ‘Maf acts downstream of ComGA to arrest cell division in competent cells of Bacillus subtilis’, Molecular Microbiology, 2011, 81(1), 23‐39. The above article from Molecular Microbiology, published online on 12 May 2011 on Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) has been retracted by agreement between the authors (except Peter Prepiak who could not be reached despite repeated attempts), the journal Editor‐in‐Chief, John D Helmann, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The retraction was initiated by the authors because the authors could not reproduce the results:

Maf, a protein previously described as inhibiting cell division, had been reported to suppress septation during competence in B. subtilis. Recent experiments have failed to repeat the cell‐length measurements reported in Table 3 for strain BD5558 (comGA maf). In fact, this strain is as filamented as a comGA strain with wild‐type maf; the absence of Maf does not relieve the block in cell division. Further, maf placed under control of an isopropyl‐ß‐d‐thiogalactoside(IPTG)‐inducible promoter neither slowed growth nor increased cell lengths upon microscopic examination when the strain was grown in the presence of 1 mM IPTG, although Western blotting revealed massive overproduction of Maf after growth with IPTG. Thus, Maf does not inhibit cell division either in the context of competence or in growing cells and we therefore retract this paper. The authors think that the discrepancy in the results is due to a non‐intentional error.

小肯尼思·布里利（Kenneth Briley Jr），彼得·普雷皮亚克（Peter Prepiak），米格尔·J·迪亚斯（Miguel J.Dias），珍妮特·哈恩（Jeanette Hahn）和戴维·杜布瑙（David Dubnau），``Maf在ComGA下游起作用，以阻止枯草芽孢杆菌感受态细胞的细胞分裂''，《分子微生物学》，2011，81 （1），23-39。以上《分子微生物学》的文章于2011年5月12日在Wiley在线图书馆（wileyonlinelibrary.com）上在线发表，作者之间达成了共识（除彼得·普雷皮亚克（Peter Prepiak），尽管反复尝试仍无法获得），该文章已被作者撤回。约翰·D·海尔曼（John D Helmann）和约翰·威利父子有限公司（John Wiley＆Sons Ltd.）

撤消由作者发起，因为作者无法复制结果：

据报道，Maf是一种先前描述为抑制细胞分裂的蛋白质，可抑制枯草芽孢杆菌竞争过程中的分隔。最近的实验未能重复表3中报告的菌株BD5558（comGA maf）的细胞长度测量。实际上，该菌株与野生型maf的comGA菌株一样细丝。Maf的缺乏不能缓解细胞分裂的障碍。此外，MAF置于异丙-SS-的控制d当菌株在1 mM IPTG存在下生长时，经硫代半乳糖苷（IPTG）诱导型启动子在显微镜下观察时既不会减慢生长速度，也不增加细胞长度，尽管Western印迹显示IPTG生长后Maf大量过量生产。因此，Maf在能力范围内或细胞生长过程中均不会抑制细胞分裂，因此我们撤回了本文。作者认为结果的差异是由于非故意错误造成的。