About the Authors

Bin Liang

Affiliation School of Molecular Biosciences, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States of America

Kim Ferguson

Affiliation Exelixis Inc., South San Francisco, California, United States of America

Lisa Kadyk

Affiliation Exelixis Inc., South San Francisco, California, United States of America

Jennifer L. Watts

jwatts@wsu.edu

Affiliation School of Molecular Biosciences, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States of America

Competing Interests

Lisa Kadyk and Kim Ferguson are employed by Exelixis. There are no patents, products in development, or marketed products pertaining to sbp-1(ep79). The company has agreed to freely distribute the sbp-1(ep79) mutant strain. This affiliation does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BL JLW. Performed the experiments: BL. Analyzed the data: BL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: BL KF LK. Wrote the paper: BL JLW.