Nat. Cell Biol. 16, 992–1003 (2014); published online 21 September 2014; corrected after print 25 September 2014

In the version of this Article originally published, the number of patients who were PGC-1α with detected CTCs in Fig. 8f should have read 'n = 2 (18.2%)'. This error has now been corrected in the online version of the Article.