Retraction to: Cell Death and Disease https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-019-1352-4, published online 12 February 2019

The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article because of significant concerns regarding a number of Figures presented in this work, which question the integrity of the data. In Figure 2C there was found to be overlap between the HCT116 sh-NC and Serine images. In Figure 6B there was found to be overlap between the HCT116 NC and Serine images and between the Mimics and Mimics+Serine images. In Figure 8A the image for LOVO miR-642a-5p appears to have been previously published in Figure 7A in the following article [1]. The Editors-in-Chief have therefore lost confidence in the reliability of the results presented in this article. Changwei Lin, Yi Zhang and Yang Bai agree to this retraction. Yifei Chen and Yi Zhang do not agree to this retraction.