About the Authors

Masataka Morioka

Contributed equally to this work with: Masataka Morioka, Harikrishnan Parameswaran, Satoru Ito

Affiliation Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Harikrishnan Parameswaran

Contributed equally to this work with: Masataka Morioka, Harikrishnan Parameswaran, Satoru Ito

Affiliation Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Keiji Naruse

Affiliation Department of Cardiovascular Physiology, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Okayama, Japan

Masashi Kondo

Affiliation Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Masahiro Sokabe

Affiliation Department of Physiology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Yoshinori Hasegawa

Affiliation Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Béla Suki

Affiliation Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Satoru Ito

Contributed equally to this work with: Masataka Morioka, Harikrishnan Parameswaran, Satoru Ito

itori@med.nagoya-u.ac.jp

Affiliation Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Competing Interests

K.N. has served on the STREX Advisory Board for up to $1,000. He has received a grant from MENICON for $1,001–$5,000, and a sponsored grant from the National Institutes of Health for $5,001–$10,000. He has a patent pending with STREX for a stretch machine, and owns stock in the amount of $10,001–$50,000. None of the other authors have a financial relationship with a commercial entity that has an interest in the subject of this manuscript. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SI HP BS. Performed the experiments: MM MK SI. Analyzed the data: MK YH SI. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MM HP KN MK YH SI. Wrote the paper: HP MS BS SI.