Erratum for the Research Article: “Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations”
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Date
2020-01-17
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Science
Abstract
In the Research Article “Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African
populations,” the authors made the inaccurate conclusion that mfsd12a targeting in zebrafish
disrupts xanthophore function. This happened because of a misinterpretation of experimental
observations, not from errors in data collection or reporting. In the original experiments, a loss
of normal methylene blue staining occurred in 100% of mfsd12a
−/−
embryos at 5 days
postfertilization. These mfsd12a
−/−
embryos were derived from matings between mosaic F0
founder fish (mfsd12a targeted mosaic F0 x mfsd12a targeted mosaic F0). The single guide
RNAs for mfsd12a were extremely efficient, and no wild-type F1 offspring were obtained from
the F0 inbreeding. Therefore, the clutches of 100% mfsd12a
−/−
embryos were compared with
embryos derived from matings of wild-type fish (mfsd12a
+/+
x mfsd12a
+/+
) in which loss of
methylene blue staining was not observed. In each case, multiple clutches were analyzed from
independent matings. Additionally, the wild-type breeders originated from the same colony of
TAB5 fish that were used to generate fertilized eggs for Cas9 injections to generate the mfsd12a
F0 founders. These reproducible results led the authors to conclude that mfsd12a was required
for normal methylene blue staining of xanthophores. However, in subsequent work, the
authors have observed a lack of methylene blue staining in clutches originating from other
matings within their facility. They have confirmed that this lack of methylene blue staining
segregates with a population variant linked to chromosome 12 within their TAB5 colony. This
variant was likely present at a high-enough frequency in their mfsd12a-targeted F0 founder fish
to affect the outcome. These recent data thus do not support their previous conclusion that
mfsd12a functions in zebrafish pigmentation (presented in Fig. 7, A and B, of the original
manuscript). Importantly, however, it does not alter the main conclusions of the manuscript
that MFSD12 is associated with mammalian pigment variation in both human and mouse. The
sections of the results referring to the zebrafish knockout have been removed entirely, along
with the accompanying figure and cited references. Both the HTML and PDF versions of the text
have been corrected.
Description
Keywords
Loci, African, Erratum
Citation
NISC Comparative Sequencing Program (2020). Erratum: Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations (Science (2020)367: 6475 (eaba7178)Doi:10.1126/science.aan8433). Science, 367(6475). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba7178