About the Authors

Jingjing Xie

Contributed equally to this work with: Jingjing Xie, Li Tang

Affiliation Mineral Nutrition Research Division, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Li Tang

Contributed equally to this work with: Jingjing Xie, Li Tang

Affiliation Mineral Nutrition Research Division, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Lin Lu

Affiliation Mineral Nutrition Research Division, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Liyang Zhang

Affiliation Mineral Nutrition Research Division, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Lin Xi

Affiliation Department of Animal Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America

Hsiao-Ching Liu

Affiliation Department of Animal Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America

Jack Odle

Affiliation Department of Animal Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America

Xugang Luo

wlysz@263.net

Affiliation Mineral Nutrition Research Division, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JX XL JO HL XL. Performed the experiments: JX LT LZ. Analyzed the data: JX LT. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LL LZ. Wrote the paper: JX LX HL JO XL.