About the Authors

Christopher J Marx

address: Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Stephen J Van Dien

Affiliation United Metabolics, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Mary E Lidstrom

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lidstrom@u.washington.edu

Affiliations Department of Microbiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

CJM, SJVD, and MEL conceived and designed the experiments. CJM and SJVD performed the experiments. CJM, SJVD, and MEL analyzed the data. CJM and SJVD contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. CJM, SJVD, and MEL wrote the paper.