About the Authors

Lixin Wang

Contributed equally to this work with: Lixin Wang, Mulugeta Million

Affiliation Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine, CURE and Center for Neurobiological Stress, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Mulugeta Million

Contributed equally to this work with: Lixin Wang, Mulugeta Million

milllionmulugeta@mednet.ucla.edu

Affiliation Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine, CURE and Center for Neurobiological Stress, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Jean Rivier

Affiliation Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California, United States of America

Catherine Rivier

Affiliation Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California, United States of America

Noah Craft

Affiliation Divisions of Dermatology and Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, Torrance, California, United States of America

Mary P. Stenzel-Poore

Affiliation Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Oregon Health & Sciences University, Portland, Oregon, United States of America

Yvette Taché

Affiliation Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine, CURE and Center for Neurobiological Stress, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflict: JR is Founder, equity owner, President, and Chair of scientific advisory board of Sentia Medical Sciences, Inc. Sentia has an exclusive license from the Salk Institute for astressin B and analogs (US patent numbers 6,323,312, 5,874,227, 5,777,073 and 7,141,546). 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: MM LW YT JR NC. Performed the experiments: LW MM. Analyzed the data: MM LW CR NC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YT JR CR MPS-P. Wrote the paper: LW MM YT JR NC. Synthetized the peptide and participated in the design of experiment: JR. Designed and generated mice and worked on manuscript: MPS-P.