About the Authors

Lulu Yang

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, P.R. China, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P.R. China

Jianjun Chen

Affiliation Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, P.R. China

Weiming Hu

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, P.R. China, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P.R. China

Tianshun Yang

Affiliation Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, P.R. China

Yanjun Zhang

Affiliation Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, P.R. China

Tamura Yukiyoshi

Affiliation Maruzen Pharmaceuticals Co., LTD, Tokyo, Japan

Yanyang Zhou

Affiliation Maruzen Pharmaceuticals Co., LTD, Tokyo, Japan

Ying Wang

yingwang@scib.ac.cn

Affiliation Key Laboratory of South China Agricultural Plant Molecular Analysis and Genetic Improvement, Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Botany, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, P.R. China

Competing Interests

This research was partially supported by the Licorice International Cooperation Project with Maruzen Pharmaceuticals Co., LTD. (Y051011001). Tamura Yukiyoshi and Yanyang Zhou are employed by Maruzen Pharmaceuticals Co., LTD. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: YW LLY TY. Data curation: LLY. Formal analysis: LLY YYZ. Funding acquisition: YW. Investigation: LLY TSY WMH. Methodology: LLY JJC. Project administration: YW. Resources: TSY WMH. Software: LLY. Supervision: YW. Validation: LLY. Visualization: YW LLY. Writing – original draft: LLY. Writing – review & editing: YW YJZ TY.