About the Authors

Zdenek Hel

zhel@uab.edu

Affiliations Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Department of Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Jun Xu

Affiliation Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Warren L. Denning

Affiliation Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

E. Scott Helton

Affiliation Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Richard P. H. Huijbregts

Affiliation Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Sonya L. Heath

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

E. Turner Overton

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Benjamin S. Christmann

Affiliation Department of Natural Science and Mathematics, Lee University, Cleveland, Tennessee, United States of America

Charles O. Elson

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Paul A. Goepfert

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Jiri Mestecky

Affiliations Department of Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Institute of Immunology and Microbiology, 1st School of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ZH JM COE PAG ETO. Performed the experiments: ZH JX WLD ESH RPHH SLH BSC. Analyzed the data: ZH JM RPHH COE PAG BSC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: PAG SLH COE ETO. Wrote the paper: ZH JM COE.