About the Authors

Billow A. Ahmed

Contributed equally to this work with: Billow A. Ahmed, Irfan A. Bukhari

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Irfan A. Bukhari

Contributed equally to this work with: Billow A. Ahmed, Irfan A. Bukhari

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Brandon C. Jeffus

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Justin T. Harney

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Sheeno Thyparambil

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Endrit Ziu

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Mony Fraer

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Nancy J. Rusch

Affiliation Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Piotr Zimniak

Affiliation Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Vladimir Lupashin

Affiliation Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Dale Tang

Affiliation Center for Cardiovascular Sciences, Albany Medical College, Albany, New York, United States of America

Fusun Kilic

kilicfusun@uams.edu

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: IB BJ FK. Performed the experiments: BA IB BJ JH ST VL FK. Analyzed the data: BA JH EZ MF NJR DT FK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: EZ NJR DT FK. Wrote the paper: EZ NJR PZ VL FK.