About the Authors

Mingyu Liu

Affiliation Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois, United States of America

Edward E. Schmidt

Affiliation Department of Veterinary Molecular Biology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, United States of America

William P. Halford

halford@siumed.edu

Affiliation Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ML WPH. Performed the experiments: ML. Analyzed the data: ML EES WPH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ML WPH. Wrote the paper: ML WPH.