About the Authors

Younghee Lee

Contributed equally to this work with: Younghee Lee, Xinan Yang, Yong Huang, Hanli Fan

Affiliation Section of Genetic Medicine and Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Xinan Yang

Contributed equally to this work with: Younghee Lee, Xinan Yang, Yong Huang, Hanli Fan

Affiliation Section of Genetic Medicine and Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Yong Huang

Contributed equally to this work with: Younghee Lee, Xinan Yang, Yong Huang, Hanli Fan

Affiliation Section of Genetic Medicine and Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Hanli Fan

Contributed equally to this work with: Younghee Lee, Xinan Yang, Yong Huang, Hanli Fan

Affiliation Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Qingbei Zhang

Affiliation Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Youngfei Wu

Affiliation Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Jianrong Li

Affiliation Section of Genetic Medicine and Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Rifat Hasina

Affiliation Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Chao Cheng

Affiliation Department of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Mark W. Lingen

Affiliations Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Department of Cellular and Radiation Oncology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Mark B. Gerstein

Affiliation Department of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Ralph R. Weichselbaum

Affiliations Department of Cellular and Radiation Oncology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

H. Rosie Xing

hxing@bsd.uchicago.edu (HRX); yLussier@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu (YAL)

These authors are joint senior authors on this work.

Affiliations Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Department of Cellular and Radiation Oncology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Yves A. Lussier

hxing@bsd.uchicago.edu (HRX); yLussier@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu (YAL)

These authors are joint senior authors on this work.

Affiliations Section of Genetic Medicine and Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: YL XY YH HF QZ YW JL HRX YAL. Performed the experiments: YL XY YH HF QZ YW JL. Analyzed the data: YL XY YH HF QZ YW JL HRX YAL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YL XY JL RH CC MWL MBG RRW HRX YAL. Wrote the paper: YL XY YH HF QZ YW JL CC RRW HRX YAL. Conceived computational methods and interpreted the results: YL XY YH CC MB YAL. Conducted all qPCR validations, cell adhesion and migration assays: HF. Treated JSQ and SQ38 cells with control and miR-204 mimics for in vitro and in vivo experiments and conducted proliferation and invasion assays: YW. Performed in vivo lung metastasis experiments and lung metastatic colony quantification: QZ. Obtained, classified and micro-dissected head and neck tumor samples: RH ML. Provided all HNSCC cell lines: RRW. Conceived biological experiemnts and interpreted the results: HRX. Supervised the overall research: HRX. Supervised the research: YAL.