About the Authors

Xi Chen

Affiliation Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States of America

Peng Liu

Affiliation Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States of America

Hui-Hsien Chou

hhchou@iastate.edu

Affiliations Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States of America, Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Designed the software used in analysis: HC. Seeking Institutional Biosafety Approval for the experiments: XC HC. Conceived and designed the experiments: XC HC. Performed the experiments: XC. Analyzed the data: XC PL HC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: XC HC. Wrote the paper: XC PL HC.