About the Authors

Bingkun Xie

Contributed equally to this work with: Bingkun Xie, Zhaoxian Qin

bkxie@163.com

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

Zhaoxian Qin

Contributed equally to this work with: Bingkun Xie, Zhaoxian Qin

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

Shuai Liu

Affiliation Hebei Research Institute for Family Planning, Shijiazhang, Hebei, P. R. China

Suqun Nong

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

Qingyan Ma

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

Baojian Chen

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

Mingjun Liu

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

Tianbiao Pan

Affiliation Guangxi Key Laboratory of Livestock Genetic Improvement, Guangxi Institute of Animal Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi, P. R. China

D. Joshua Liao

Affiliation Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, Austin, Minnesota, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BX. Performed the experiments: ZQ SL. Analyzed the data: BC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SN QM ML TP. Wrote the paper: BX ZQ. English editing for this manuscript: DJL.