About the Authors

Andrey Zhivov

Contributed equally to this work with: Andrey Zhivov, Sabine Peschel

andyzhyvov@yahoo.com

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

Sabine Peschel

Contributed equally to this work with: Andrey Zhivov, Sabine Peschel

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

Hans-Christof Schober

Affiliation Clinic of Internal Medicine I, Klinikum Südstadt, Rostock, Germany

Oliver Stachs

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

Simone Baltrusch

Affiliation Institute of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

Marie Therese Bambi

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, St. Joseph Hospital, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Janvier Kilangalanga

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, St. Joseph Hospital, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Karsten Winter

Affiliation Translational Centre for Regenerative Medicine (TRM), University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

Guenther Kundt

Affiliation Institute for Biostatistics and Informatics in Medicine and Ageing Research, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

Rudolf F. Guthoff

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: AZ HS RFG OS. Performed the experiments: AZ SP MTB JK OS. Analyzed the data: AZ KW SP JK SB OS GK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HS SB OS. Wrote the paper: AZ KW SP RFG OS GK.