About the Authors

James H. Smith

jhsmith@thornediagnostics.com

Affiliation Assay Development Department, Thorne Diagnostics Inc, Beverly, Massachusetts, United States of America

Thomas P. Beals

Affiliation Assay Development Department, Thorne Diagnostics Inc, Beverly, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

Authors James H. Smith and Thomas P. Beals are employed by Thorne Diagnostics Inc. Thorne Diagnostics has an exclusive license to the following patents issued to Mt. Sinai Medical Center (New York) and relating to material pertinent to this article (DY Zhang: U.S. Patent No.5,942,391; 6,569,647; 6,855,523; and 7,361,489). There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JHS. Performed the experiments: JHS. Analyzed the data: JHS TPB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JHS. Wrote the paper: JHS TPB.