About the Authors

Yu-Fang Pei

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering, Ministry of Education and Institute of Molecular Genetics, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China, School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America

Lei Zhang

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering, Ministry of Education and Institute of Molecular Genetics, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China, School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America

Jian Li

Affiliation School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America

Hong-Wen Deng

dengh@umkc.edu

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering, Ministry of Education and Institute of Molecular Genetics, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China, School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America, Center of System Biomedical Sciences, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, People's Republic of China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: HWD. Performed the experiments: YFP. Analyzed the data: YFP. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JL. Wrote the paper: YFP. Revised the manuscript: LZ HWD.