About the Authors

Zhongyao Sun

Affiliation Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Xiaofen Jin

Affiliation Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Réka Albert

rza1@psu.edu (RA); sma3@psu.edu (SMA)

Affiliations Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Sarah M. Assmann

rza1@psu.edu (RA); sma3@psu.edu (SMA)

Affiliation Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SMA XJ ZS RA. Performed the experiments: XJ. Analyzed the data: XJ ZS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ZS. Wrote the paper: ZS RA SMA. Conceived and designed the model: SMA RA ZS. Performed model simulations: ZS.