About the Authors

Minal Patel

Affiliation Center for Hearing and Deafness, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Qunfeng Cai

Affiliation Center for Hearing and Deafness, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Dalian Ding

Affiliation Center for Hearing and Deafness, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Richard Salvi

Affiliation Center for Hearing and Deafness, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Zihua Hu

Affiliation Center for Computational Research, New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences, Department of Ophthalmology, Department of Biostatistics, Department of Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Bo Hua Hu

bhu@buffalo.edu

Affiliation Center for Hearing and Deafness, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MP DD RS BH. Performed the experiments: MP QC DD ZH. Analyzed the data: MP RS ZH BH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ZH BH RS. Wrote the paper: MP RS BH.