About the Authors

Viorica Ionut

Contributed equally to this work with: Viorica Ionut, Orison O. Woolcott

† Deceased.

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Orison O. Woolcott

Contributed equally to this work with: Viorica Ionut, Orison O. Woolcott

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Hasmik J. Mkrtchyan

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Darko Stefanovski

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Morvarid Kabir

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Malini S. Iyer

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Huiwen Liu

Affiliation Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Ana V. B. Castro

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Qiang Wu

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Josiane L. Broussard

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Cathryn M. Kolka

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Isaac Asare-Bediako

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Richard N. Bergman

Richard.Bergman@cshs.org

Affiliation Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

VI received funding from Amylin Pharmaceuticals. Exenatide used in this study was provided by Amylin Pharmaceuticals. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, and Amylin Pharmaceuticals had no role in the design, planning, conduct, analysis or writing of the present study.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: VI RNB CMK. Performed the experiments: VI OOW HJM DS MK MSI HL AVBC QW JLB. Analyzed the data: VI OOW RNB DS MK IAB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DS. Wrote the paper: OOW VI RNB. Performed the statistical analysis: OOW. Had full access to all the data in the study and takes full responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis: OOW. Helped revise the manuscript critically for important intellectual content: MK DS CMK.