About the Authors

Xue-Feng Ma

Affiliation Ceres, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California, United States of America

Elaine Jensen

Affiliation Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, Gogerddan, United Kingdom

Nickolai Alexandrov

Affiliation Ceres, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California, United States of America

Maxim Troukhan

Affiliation Ceres, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California, United States of America

Liping Zhang

Affiliation Ceres, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California, United States of America

Sian Thomas-Jones

Affiliation Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, Gogerddan, United Kingdom

Kerrie Farrar

Affiliation Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, Gogerddan, United Kingdom

John Clifton-Brown

Affiliation Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, Gogerddan, United Kingdom

Iain Donnison

Affiliation Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, Gogerddan, United Kingdom

Timothy Swaller

tswaller@ceres-inc.com

Affiliation Ceres, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California, United States of America

Richard Flavell

Affiliation Ceres, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors, Xue-Feng Ma, Nickolai Alexandrov, Maxim Troukhan, Liping Zhang, Timothy Swaller, and Richard Flavell are employees of Ceres, Inc., a privately held company. The work of Ceres, Inc. described in this study was provided as an in-kind contribution to the “BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre (BSBEC): Bioenergy from Miscanthus and Salix Species” program (BSBEC-BioMASS; http://www.bsbec-biomass.org.uk/; Grant BB/G016216/1). 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: XFM EJ ID TS RF. Performed the experiments: EJ LZ STJ KF JCB. Analyzed the data: XFM NA MT. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: EJ MT LZ. Wrote the paper: XFM NA TS.