Correction to: Nature Reviews Microbiology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-023-00955-6, published online 12 September 2023.

In the version of the article initially published, the article Tomizawa, J., Itoh, T., Selzer, G. & Som, T., Inhibition of ColE1 RNA primer formation by a plasmid-specified small RNA. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 78, 1421–1425 (1981), now listed as “Original article”, incorrectly appeared under “Related article”. Mentions of the previous “Original article” (Stougaard, P., Molin, S. & Nordström, K., RNAs involved in copy-number control and incompatibility of plasmid R1. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 78, 6008–6012 (1981)) within the text have been updated from “Nordström and colleagues” to “Tomizawa and colleagues”. In addition, the original fourth paragraph and first two sentences of the fifth paragraph have been replaced with “The replication of ColE1-type plasmids requires the synthesis of RNA II, a long RNA molecule that forms a RNA–DNA hybrid with its template, leading to cleavage of the RNA by RNase H and the generation of a primer for DNA synthesis. Tomizawa et al. discovered that RNA I inhibits primer formation, and because RNA I did not block the initiation, elongation of transcription, or the processing of pre-existing precursor RNAs formed in its absence, the authors concluded that the step that is susceptible to inhibition is the formation of the hybrid between the primer precursor RNA II and its template.” These changes have been made to the HTML and PDF versions of the article.