About the Authors

Aaron A. Curtis

Roles Formal analysis, Investigation, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Division of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Yajun Yu

Roles Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Institute of Cardiovascular Research, Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, Sichuan, China

Megan Carey

Roles Data curation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Division of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Yildiz E. Yilmaz

Roles Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Sevtap Savas

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

savas@mun.ca

Affiliations Division of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada, Division of Population Health and Applied Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada, Discipline of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Competing Interests

Sevtap Savas was an academic editor with PLOS ONE at the time of submission & initial review process. The authors declare no other conflict of interest. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.