About the Authors

Hong Tran

Affiliation Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Xiaowei Wu

Affiliation Department of Statistics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Saima Tithi

Affiliation Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Ming-an Sun

Affiliation Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Hehuang Xie

Affiliations Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University(Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Liqing Zhang

lqzhang@cs.vt.edu

Affiliation Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MS HX. Performed the experiments: MS HX. Analyzed the data: HT XW ST LZ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HT XW. Wrote the paper: HT XW LZ.