About the Authors

Amit R. Ashtekar

Current address: Southern Research Institute, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Jannet Katz

Affiliation Department of Pediatric Dentistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Qingan Xu

Current address: The Key Laboratory for Oral Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China

Affiliation Department of Pediatric Dentistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Suzanne M. Michalek

suemich@uab.edu

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ARA JK SMM. Performed the experiments: ARA QX. Analyzed the data: ARA. Wrote the paper: ARA JK SMM.