Journal urges its readers not to cite professor's gene paper

Scientific journal Nature Biotechnology published a statement on Monday urging readers not to cite a paper it published in May by Chinese scholar Han Chunyu on the next-generation gene-editing tool NgAgo.

Han, an associate professor at Hebei University of Science and Technology, impressed life scientists across the globe when he announced his discovery of NgAgo, which he said is more efficient than the widely used CRISPR/Cas9 approach, also known as the "molecular Swiss armyknife".

However, scientists from home and abroad soon began to report failures in reproducing Han's experiment.