About the Authors

Yan Fu

Affiliations Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, Interdisciplinary PhD Program of Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Trevor Glaros

Affiliation Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Meng Zhu

Affiliation School of Computing, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, United States of America

Ping Wang

Affiliation Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Zhanghan Wu

Affiliations Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, Interdisciplinary PhD Program of Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

John J. Tyson

Affiliation Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Liwu Li

lwli@vt.edu (LL); jxing@vt.edu (JX)

Affiliation Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Jianhua Xing

lwli@vt.edu (LL); jxing@vt.edu (JX)

Affiliation Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JJT LL JX. Analyzed the data: YF MZ PW ZW JX. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YF MZ PW ZW JJT JX. Wrote the paper: YF JJT LL JX. Performed computational research: YF TG MZ PW ZW JX. Performed experimental research: TG LL.