自然杂志的回复 - （恶搞，笑一笑就好！）

Dear Dr. Yan,

Thank you very much for expressing to us your concern about one of our publications entitled "Crystal structure of a bacterial homologue of glucose transporters GLUT1-4." by Dr. N Yan and her colleagues.  After reviewing the relevant papers by you and Dr. N Yan, we believe that both of you made important but distinct contributions to the understanding of the structure and function of bacterial glucose transporters.  However, we don't share your opinion about a potential misconduct by Dr. N. Yan simply because she didn't cite your work in her paper.  We based our belief on the following:

1. Using crystallography, Dr N Yan and colleagues clearly illustrated the structure of XylE, an bacterial homologue of mammalian GLUTs. These genes are from a different subfamily from WTF, which is the one you studied.  Therefore, we believe that her work was not only novel but also highly impactful. 
2. Regarding the citation of related work, it is our policy that authors only cite previous work that is highly relevant.  To that end, Dr. N. Yan cited 50 highly relevant papers including those dealing with the cloning and functional analysis of the gene as well as those related to the structure of representative members of the SP family.  Therefore, we believe that it was entirely appropriate for her not to cite your work.

At Nature Journals, we hold ourselves and our contributors to the highest scientific and ethical standards, and in this case it was no exception. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely Yours,

Xiaobian for Nature   

BTW: are you related to Dr. N Yan?   :)