About the Authors

Dequina Nicholas

Contributed equally to this work with: Dequina Nicholas, Elizabeth A. Proctor, Forum M. Raval

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Elizabeth A. Proctor

Contributed equally to this work with: Dequina Nicholas, Elizabeth A. Proctor, Forum M. Raval

Affiliation Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Forum M. Raval

Contributed equally to this work with: Dequina Nicholas, Elizabeth A. Proctor, Forum M. Raval

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Blanche C. Ip

Current address: Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology, Center of Biomedical Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Chloe Habib

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Eleni Ritou

Affiliation BioEnergetics LLC, Boston, MA, United States of America

Tom N. Grammatopoulos

Affiliation BioEnergetics LLC, Boston, MA, United States of America

Devin Steenkamp

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Hans Dooms

Affiliations Department of Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America, Arthritis Center, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Caroline M. Apovian

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Douglas A. Lauffenburger

Affiliation Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Barbara S. Nikolajczyk

bnikol@bu.edu

Affiliations Department of Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America, Department of Pathology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dr. Apovian reports grants and personal fees from Amylin, personal fees from Merck, personal fees from Johnson & Johnson, personal fees from Arena, personal fees from Nutrisystem, personal fees from Zafgen, grants and personal fees from Sanofi-Aventis, grants and personal fees from Orexigen, personal fees from EnteroMedics, personal fees from NovoNordisk, grants from Aspire Bariatrics, grants from GI Dynamics, grants from Myos, grants and personal fees from Takeda. TG and ER are paid employees of BioEnergetics LLC. There are no other competing interests relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc. These affiliations do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials as detailed in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: DN EP FR BI ER TG DL BN. Data curation: DN EP. Formal analysis: DN EP FR. Funding acquisition: DL BN. Investigation: DN EP FR BI ER TG HD DL. Methodology: DN EP FR BN. Project administration: BN. Resources: CH DS CA. Software: DN EP DL BN. Supervision: BN. Validation: DN EP. Visualization: DN EP FR. Writing – original draft: BN. Writing – review & editing: DN EP FR BI HD DL BN.