About the Authors

Girish Neelakanta

Contributed equally to this work with: Girish Neelakanta, Xin Li

Affiliation Section of Rheumatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Xin Li

Contributed equally to this work with: Girish Neelakanta, Xin Li

Affiliation Section of Rheumatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Utpal Pal

¤ Current address: Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Section of Rheumatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Xianzhong Liu

Affiliation Section of Rheumatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Deborah S Beck

Affiliation Section of Rheumatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Kathleen DePonte

Affiliation Section of Allergy and Immunology, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Durland Fish

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Fred S Kantor

Affiliation Section of Allergy and Immunology, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Erol Fikrig

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: erol.fikrig@yale.edu

Affiliations Section of Rheumatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America , Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

G. Neelakanta, X. Li, F. Kantor, and E. Fikrig conceived and designed the experiments. G. Neelakanta, X. Li, U. Pal, X. Liu, D. Beck, and K. DePonte performed the experiments. G. Neelakanta, X. Li, U. Pal, F. Kantor, and E. Fikrig analyzed the data. G. Neelakanta and D. Fish contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. X. Li and E. Fikrig wrote the paper.