About the Authors

Ning Li

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America

Timothy McMurry

Affiliation Department of Mathematical Sciences, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Arthur Berg

Affiliations Division of Biostatistics, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Center for Computational Biology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Zhong Wang

Affiliation Division of Biostatistics, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Scott A. Berceli

Affiliation Department of Surgery, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America

Rongling Wu

rwu@hes.hmc.psu.edu

Affiliations Division of Biostatistics, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Center for Computational Biology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SAB RW. Performed the experiments: NL TM AB. Analyzed the data: NL TM AB ZW. Wrote the paper: NL TM AB RW.