About the Authors

Guoying Wang

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Lester Arguelles

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Rong Liu

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Shanchun Zhang

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Wendy J. Brickman

Affiliation Division of Endocrinology, Department of Pediatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Xiumei Hong

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Hui-Ju Tsai

Affiliations The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, Zhunan, Taiwan

Binyan Wang

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Houxun Xing

Affiliation The Institute for Biomedicine, Anhui Medical University, Heifei, China

Zhiping Li

Affiliation The Institute for Biomedicine, Anhui Medical University, Heifei, China

Xiping Xu

Affiliation Center for Population Genetics of Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Xiaobin Wang

xbwang@childrensmemorial.org

Affiliation The Mary Ann and J Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program, Children's Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: GW WB BW XX XW. Performed the experiments: GW RL SZ XH BW HX ZL. Analyzed the data: GW SZ H-JT. Wrote the paper: GW WB LA XX XW.