About the Authors

Xiaozhen Zhang

Contributed equally to this work with: Xiaozhen Zhang, Marybeth Daucher

Affiliation Immunopathogenesis Section, Laboratory of Immunoregulation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Marybeth Daucher

Contributed equally to this work with: Xiaozhen Zhang, Marybeth Daucher

Affiliation Immunopathogenesis Section, Laboratory of Immunoregulation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

David Armistead

Affiliation Life Technologies Incorporated, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States of America

Rodney Russell

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Health Sciences Center, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada

Shyam Kottilil

skottilil@niaid.nih.gov

Affiliation Immunopathogenesis Section, Laboratory of Immunoregulation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Competing Interests

Mr. Armistead is an employee of Life Technologies, Inc., a biotechnology company. His contribution to the manuscript included data analysis of miRNA arrays. Neither Mr. Armistead nor Life Technologies, Inc. have a competing financial interest in this manuscript. Therefore, 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: XZ MD DA RR SK. Performed the experiments: XZ DA. Analyzed the data: XZ MD DA RR. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RR. Wrote the paper: MD SK.