About the Authors

Vicky Wang-Wei Tsai

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

Laurence Macia

Affiliation Centre for Immunology and Inflammation, School of Biomedical Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

Christine Feinle-Bisset

Affiliation Discipline of Medicine University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

Rakesh Manandhar

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

Arne Astrup

Affiliation Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Faculty of Science. University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Copenhagen, Denmark

Anne Raben

Affiliation Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Faculty of Science. University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Copenhagen, Denmark

Janne Kunchel Lorenzen

Affiliation Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Faculty of Science. University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Copenhagen, Denmark

Peter T. Schmidt

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Unit of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

Fredrik Wiklund

Affiliation Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Nancy L. Pedersen

Affiliation Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Lesley Campbell

Affiliation Diabetes and Metabolism Division, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Adamandia Kriketos

Affiliation Diabetes and Metabolism Division, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Aimin Xu

Affiliation Department of Medicine & Department of Pharmacology & Pharmacy, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Zhou Pengcheng

Affiliation Department of Medicine & Department of Pharmacology & Pharmacy, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Weiping Jia

Affiliation Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Diabetes Institute, Shanghai Clinical Center of Diabetes, Shanghai, China

Paul M G. Curmi

Affiliation School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Christopher N. Angstmann

Affiliation School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

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, NSW, Australia

Hong Ping Zhang

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

Christopher P. Marquis

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

Yasmin Husaini

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

Christoph Beglinger

Affiliation Clinical Research Center, Department of Biomedicine, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Shu Lin

Affiliation Neuroscience Division, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Herbert Herzog

Affiliation Neuroscience Division, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, NSW, 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, NSW, Australia

Amanda Sainsbury

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

Affiliation The Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders, Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 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, NSW, 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 a MIC-1/GDF15 diagnostic assay and modulatory therapy. St Vincent’s Hospital agrees to make to make freely available any materials and information described in this publication that may be reasonably requested for the purpose of academic, non-commercial research. Due to the proprietary nature of the materials, the parties will need to enter into a material transfer agreement. 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 SL HH DAB AS SNB. Performed the experiments: RM KKML HZ YH. Analyzed the data: VWT DAB PMGC CNA AS SNB NLP. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CF AA AR JKL PTS FW NLP LC AK AX ZP WJ PMGC CNA KKML HZ CPM CB. Wrote the paper: VWT CF DAB PMGC AS SNB.