Retracted: Diverse Plasmids Harboring bla CTX-M-15 in Klebsiella pneumoniae ST11 Isolates from Several Asian Countries

Abstract

Microbial Drug Resistance

officially retracts the paper entitled, “Diverse Plasmids Harboring blaCTX-M-15 in Klebsiella pneumoniae ST11 Isolates from Several Asian Countries,” by So Yeon Kim and Kwan Soo Ko (Microb Drug Resist. 2019;25(2):227–232; doi: 10/1089.mdr.2018.0020) due to questionable plasmid sequences.

After the online publication of the article, the Editor of Microbial Drug Resistance (MDR) received a Letter to the Editor¹ by Dr. Michael Jobling (University of Colorado, Department of Immunology and Microbiology), questioning certain aspects of reported work–specifically that the genomes in the study were highly inaccurate–and that incomplete and prophage genes were not encoded by any of the plasmids in that study. The response from Dr. Ko to the inquiry did not satisfy Dr. Jobling's concerns which resulted in the submission of a new commentary² to the journal.

Following this new commentary, the Editor of MDR made repeated attempts asking the corresponding author of the originally published article, Dr. Ko, for access to the raw data for further analysis by independent experts, as well as by Dr. Jobling, but did not receive any response. Due to Dr. Ko's unresponsiveness, the Editor emailed the authors once more to notify them that the article would be retracted based on the issues raised in Dr. Jobling's initial Letter to the Editor. It was then that Dr. Ko replied, asking for more time to resolve the issues.

Dr. Ko generated new sequencing data of plasmid pHK02-026 that he made available to the journal and to Dr. Jobling. An independent expert's analysis of the data supports Dr. Jobling's questioning of the original sequence assembly of plasmid pHK02-06. Additionally, Dr. Ko failed to supply any new additional data regarding the other plasmids in question, pM16-13, pIN-03-01 and pTH02-34. At best, the assemblies are erroneous, but the data suggests that these were partially fabricated. Based on these conclusions, the Editor of Microbial Drug Resistance determined a retraction of the paper was necessary.

The Editor and Publisher of Microbial Drug Resistance is committed to upholding the rigors of scientific publishing and the veracity of the literature.

References

1. Jobling MG. Trust but verify: uncorroborated assemblies of plasmid genomes from next-generation sequencing data are likely spurious: Comment on: “Diverse Plasmids Harboring bla_CTX-M-15 in Klebsiella pneumoniae ST11 Isolates from Several Asian Countries.” Microb. Drug Resist. 2019;25(10):1521–1524. doi: 10.1089/mdr.2018.0426.

2. Jobling M. Letter to the Editor re: Analysis of contig data used to assemble genomes of bla_CTX-M-15 plasmids in Klebsiella pneumoniae. Microb. Drug Resist. doi: 10.1089/mdr.2020.0600.