About the Authors

Rui Chen

joseph.garcia@utsouthwestern.edu (JG); 101011816@seu.edu.cn (RC)

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America, Key Laboratory of Environmental Medicine Engineering, Ministry of Education, School of Public Health, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

Min Xu

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Jason S. Nagati

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Richard T. Hogg

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Alok Das

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Robert D. Gerard

Affiliation Department of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Joseph A. Garcia

joseph.garcia@utsouthwestern.edu (JG); 101011816@seu.edu.cn (RC)

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America, Department of Medicine, Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RC RDG JG. Performed the experiments: RC MX JN RTH AD. Analyzed the data: RC MX JN JG. Wrote the paper: RC RDG JG. Constructed figures and performed statistical analyses: JG.