About the Authors

Jian Li

Affiliation School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America

Yan-fang Guo

Affiliation School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China

Yufang Pei

Affiliations School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America, Center of System Biomedical Sciences, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, People's Republic of China

Hong-Wen Deng

hdeng2@tulane.edu

Affiliations School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America, Center of System Biomedical Sciences, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, People's Republic of China, Laboratory of Molecular and Statistical Genetics and the Key Laboratory of Protein Chemistry and Developmental Biology of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JL HWD. Analyzed the data: JL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JL YG YP. Wrote the paper: JL YG HWD.