About the Authors

Weici Zhang

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America

Masanobu Tsuda

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America

Guo-Xiang Yang

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America

Koichi Tsuneyama

Affiliation Diagnostic Pathology, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Science, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan

Xiao-Song He

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America

Aftab A. Ansari

Affiliation Department of Pathology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

William M. Ridgway

Affiliation Division of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

Ross L. Coppel

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Zhe-Xiong Lian

Affiliation Institute of Immunology, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

Patrick S.C. Leung

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America

M. Eric Gershwin

megershwin@ucdavis.edu

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: WZ AAA WMR MEG. Performed the experiments: WZ MT GXY KT XSH. Analyzed the data: WZ KT XSH RLC PSCL MEG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RLC ZXL. Wrote the paper: AAA PSCL WMR MEG.