Analysis, Modeling, and Visualization of Chromosome Conformation Capture Experiments

Methods Mol Biol. 2021:2157:35-63. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0664-3_4.

Abstract

Chromatin Conformation Capture techniques have unveiled several layers of chromosome organization such as the segregation in compartments, the folding in topologically associating domains (TADs), and site-specific looping interactions. The discovery of this genome hierarchical organization emerged from the computational analysis of chromatin capture data. With the increasing availability of such data, automatic pipelines for the robust comparison, grouping, and classification of multiple experiments are needed. Here we present a pipeline based on the TADbit framework that emphasizes reproducibility, automation, quality check, and statistical robustness. This comprehensive modular pipeline covers all the steps from the sequencing products to the visualization of reconstructed 3D models of the chromatin.

Keywords: 3D modeling; 3D visualization; Chromosome Conformation Capture data analysis; Detection of TADs; Detection of compartments; Interaction filtering; Matrix normalization; Read mapping.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Chromatin / genetics
  • Chromatin / metabolism
  • Chromosomes, Human / genetics
  • Chromosomes, Human / metabolism*
  • Genome, Human / genetics
  • Genome, Human / physiology
  • Humans

Substances

  • Chromatin