About the Authors

Dhara Shah

Affiliation Lacrimal Cell Biology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chicago, United States of America

Marwan Ali

Affiliation Lacrimal Cell Biology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chicago, United States of America

Deepak Shukla

Affiliation University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chicago, United States of America

Sandeep Jain

Affiliation University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chicago, United States of America

Vinay Kumar Aakalu

vaakalu@uic.edu

Affiliation Lacrimal Cell Biology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chicago, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: DS MA VA. Data curation: DS MA VA. Formal analysis: DS MA VA. Funding acquisition: VA. Investigation: DS MA VA. Methodology: SJ VA. Project administration: DS MA VA. Resources: DS MA VA. Software: DS MA VA. Supervision: SJ DS VA. Validation: DS MA VA. Visualization: DS MA VA. Writing – original draft: DS MA VA. Writing – review & editing: DS MA DS SJ VA.