About the Authors

Benjamin Hilton

Contributed equally to this work with: Benjamin Hilton, Sathyaraj Gopal

Affiliation Department of Biomedical Sciences, Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37614, United States of America

Sathyaraj Gopal

Contributed equally to this work with: Benjamin Hilton, Sathyaraj Gopal

Affiliation Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, 02881, United States of America

Lifang Xu

Affiliation Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, 02881, United States of America

Sharmistha Mazumder

Affiliation Department of Biomedical Sciences, Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37614, United States of America

Phillip R. Musich

Affiliation Department of Biomedical Sciences, Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37614, United States of America

Bongsup P. Cho

zouy@etsu.edu (YZ); bcho@uri.edu (BPC)

Affiliation Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, 02881, United States of America

Yue Zou

zouy@etsu.edu (YZ); bcho@uri.edu (BPC)

Affiliation Department of Biomedical Sciences, Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37614, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BH SG SM BPC YZ. Performed the experiments: BH SG LX SM. Analyzed the data: BH SG PRM BPC YZ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: BPC YZ. Wrote the paper: BH SG PRM BPC YZ.