Nat. Chem. Biol. 6, 464–470 (2010); published online 9 May 2010; retracted 14 February 2014

We wish to retract our article entitled “Reprogramming bacteria to seek and destroy an herbicide.”

While performing further studies on the riboswitch reported in the article, a postdoctoral researcher in our laboratory was unable to reproduce the results reported in Figure 4. Specifically, neither atrazine-dependent changes in β-galactosidase activity (Fig. 4a) nor changes in motility (Fig. 4b,c) were observed. Upon learning this, J.P.G. asked a second postdoctoral researcher with expertise in synthetic riboswitches to carry out the experiments. Again, no significant atrazine-dependent changes in β-galactosidase activity or motility were observed. Because atrazine-dependent changes in gene expression formed the central thesis of the paper, we feel that retraction of the work in its entirety is essential.

At the request of J.P.G., the Emory University Office of Research Compliance conducted an independent inquiry. The inquiry committee concurred with the authors' decision to retract the article based on the irreproducibility of the results.

We sincerely apologize to the scientific community for any harm caused by this publication.