About the Authors

Tieshan Xu

Contributed equally to this work with: Tieshan Xu, Lihong Gu

Affiliations Institute of Animal Science (IAS), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, P.R. China, Tropical Crops Genetic Resources Institute, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Science, Danzhuo, Hainan, P.R. China

Lihong Gu

Contributed equally to this work with: Tieshan Xu, Lihong Gu

Affiliations Institute of Animal Science (IAS), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, P.R. China, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Agriculture, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, P.R. China

Kyle Michael Schachtschneider

Affiliation Department of Animal Science, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America

Xiaolin Liu

Affiliation Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Agriculture, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, P.R. China

Wei Huang

Affiliation Institute of Animal Science (IAS), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, P.R. China

Ming Xie

Affiliation Institute of Animal Science (IAS), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, P.R. China

Shuisheng Hou

houss2010@126.com

Affiliation Institute of Animal Science (IAS), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, P.R. China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SSH XLL. Performed the experiments: LHG. Analyzed the data: TSX MX. Wrote the paper: TSX. Manuscript Modification: KS. Experiment preparation: WH.