Retraction: Exogenous myristate fuels the growth of symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi but disrupts their carbon-phosphorus exchange with host plants

Chen H, Xiong T, Guan B, Huang J, Zhao D, Chen Y, Liang H, Li Y, Wu J, Ye S, Li T, Shu W, Li J-T, Wang Y. 2025. Exogenous myristate fuels the growth of symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi but disrupts their carbon-phosphorus exchange with host plants. eLife 14:RP109524. doi: 10.7554/eLife.109524.

Published 19 December 2025

We are retracting the eLife paper cited above, which proposed the uptake of external myristate by symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and its subsequent disruption of carbon-phosphorus exchange in arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) symbiosis. Following publication, the editorial office raised concerns regarding the presentation and analysis of a small portion of data — specifically, instances of potentially duplicated values, the inappropriate use of shared controls, and incorrect statistical analyses.

Upon a thorough internal review by the authors, we identified several errors resulting from unintentional oversights. Specifically,

1. In Figure 1C, background (control) ¹³C levels in R. irregularis Trial 2 and R. diaphanus extrardical hyphae were combined as a single non-labelled control group, which was displayed in a misleading manner. Regarding the concerns of three pairs of seemingly identical ¹³C abundance values in the raw data file, we confirm that these values are indeed very close, as is common for ¹³C background measurements, but are not identical. We have provided the original raw outputs from the EA-IRMS instrument in our communication with the editorial office to substantiate this clarification.

2. We acknowledge that several statistical analyses in Figures 2c, 3f, 5d, 6e, and Supplementary Figures S1-2 were performed incorrectly. This resulted in inaccurate statistical significance labels, although the impact on the primary conclusions of this study is minimal.

3. In the supplementary material, the measurement precision of the EA-IRMS device was incorrectly stated as ±0.2‰. The actual precision for the ¹³C:¹²C ratio of CO₂ from combusted samples used in our analysis was ±0.002‰, a higher level of precision adequately supports the conclusions presented in the main text.

We clarify that these issues stem entirely from inadvertent errors. Detailed explanations and original data records have been provided to the editorial office. Although we remain confident in the core conclusions of the study, we have decided to retract the paper to uphold the integrity of the scientific record and to prevent any potential misinterpretations by readers. All of the authors agree that retraction is the appropriate course of action. The authors sincerely apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.