About the Authors

Naoki Maruo

Contributed equally to this work with: Naoki Maruo, Yoshihiko Sawa

Affiliation Section of Periodontology, Department of Odontology, Fukuoka Dental College, Fukuoka, Japan

Ryuji Sakagami

sakagami@college.fdcnet.ac.jp

Affiliation Section of Periodontology, Department of Odontology, Fukuoka Dental College, Fukuoka, Japan

Yasunori Yoshinaga

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Section of Periodontology, Department of Odontology, Fukuoka Dental College, Fukuoka, Japan

Kazuhiko Okamura

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Section of Pathology, Department of Morphological Biology, Fukuoka Dental College, Fukuoka, Japan

Yoshihiko Sawa

Contributed equally to this work with: Naoki Maruo, Yoshihiko Sawa

Affiliation Section of Functional Structure, Department of Morphological Biology, Fukuoka Dental College, Fukuoka, Japan

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RS. Performed the experiments: NM RS. Analyzed the data: YS KO. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YY. Wrote the paper: RS NM YS.