About the Authors

Vicky Wang-Wei Tsai

These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Laurence Macia

Current address: Centre for Immunology and Inflammation, School of Biomedical Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Neuroscience Program, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Heiko Johnen

Current address: Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia, Madrid, Spain

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Tamara Kuffner

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Rakesh Manadhar

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Sebastian Beck Jørgensen

Affiliation Diabetes Research Unit, Novo Nordisk A/S, Maaloev, Denmark

Ka Ki Michelle Lee-Ng

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Hong Ping Zhang

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Liyun Wu

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Christopher Peter Marquis

Affiliation School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Lele Jiang

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Yasmin Husaini

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Shu Lin

Affiliation Neuroscience Program, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Herbert Herzog

Affiliation Neuroscience Program, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

David A. Brown

Contributed equally to this work with: David A. Brown, Amanda Sainsbury, Samuel N. Breit

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Amanda Sainsbury

Contributed equally to this work with: David A. Brown, Amanda Sainsbury, Samuel N. Breit

Current address: The Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders, Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Affiliation Neuroscience Program, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Samuel N. Breit

Contributed equally to this work with: David A. Brown, Amanda Sainsbury, Samuel N. Breit

s.breit@amr.org.au

Affiliation St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal’s policy and have the following conflicts: DAB and SNB are named inventors on patents owned by St Vincent’s Hospital that pertain to the clinical use of MIC-1/GDF15 diagnostic assay and modulatory therapy. SBJ is an employee of Novo NorDisk, which has licensed MIC-1/GDF15 agonist therapeutic technology from St Vincent’s Hospital. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: VWT LM HJ TK SBJ SL HH DAB AS SNB. Performed the experiments: VWT LM HJ TK RM KKML HZ LW CPM LJ YH. Analyzed the data: VWT LM HJ TK RM DAB AS SNB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CPM. Wrote the paper: VWT DAB AS SNB.