About the Authors

Kai Jiao

Contributed equally to this work with: Kai Jiao, Jing Zhang, Mian Zhang, Yuying Wei

Affiliation Department of Oral Anatomy and Physiology and TMD, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Jing Zhang

Contributed equally to this work with: Kai Jiao, Jing Zhang, Mian Zhang, Yuying Wei

Affiliation Department of Oral Anatomy and Physiology and TMD, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Mian Zhang

Contributed equally to this work with: Kai Jiao, Jing Zhang, Mian Zhang, Yuying Wei

Affiliation Department of Oral Anatomy and Physiology and TMD, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Yuying Wei

Contributed equally to this work with: Kai Jiao, Jing Zhang, Mian Zhang, Yuying Wei

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Yaoping Wu

Affiliation Department of Orthopedics, Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Zhong Ying Qiu

Affiliation Department of Oral Anatomy and Physiology and TMD, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Jianjun He

Affiliation Department of Oral Anatomy and Physiology and TMD, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Yunxin Cao

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Jintao Hu

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Han Zhu

Affiliation Department of Orthopedics, Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Li-Na Niu

Affiliation Department of Prosthodontics, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Xu Cao

Affiliation Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Kun Yang

yangkunkun@fmmu.edu.cn (KY); mqwang@fmmu.edu.cn (MQW)

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Mei-Qing Wang

yangkunkun@fmmu.edu.cn (KY); mqwang@fmmu.edu.cn (MQW)

Affiliation Department of Oral Anatomy and Physiology and TMD, School of Stomatology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Important suggestions on the experimental design and critical comments on the manuscript: XC. Conceived and designed the experiments: MQW KY. Performed the experiments: KJ JZ MZ Y. Wei. Analyzed the data: YC J.Hu LNN ZYQ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HZ Y. Wu J. He. Wrote the paper: KJ MQW KY.