GenomicInteractions: An R/Bioconductor package for manipulating and investigating chromatin interaction data. (December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Harmston, Nathan; Ing-Simmons, Elizabeth; Perry, Malcolm; Barešić, Anja; Lenhard, Boris
• Is Part Of: BMC genomics. Volume 16:Number 1(2015)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 9
• Publication Date: 2015-12
• Subjects: Genomes -- Periodicals; Gene mapping -- Periodicals; Genomics -- Periodicals; Base Sequence -- Periodicals; Chromosome Mapping -- Periodicals; Genetic Techniques -- Periodicals; Sequence Analysis, DNA -- Periodicals; 572.8605
• DOI: 10.1186/s12864-015-2140-x
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1471-2164

Abstract

Abstract Background Precise quantitative and spatiotemporal control of gene expression is necessary to ensure proper cellular differentiation and the maintenance of homeostasis. The relationship between gene expression and the spatial organisation of chromatin is highly complex, interdependent and not completely understood. The development of experimental techniques to interrogate both the higher-order structure of chromatin and the interactions between regulatory elements has recently lead to important insights on how gene expression is controlled. The ability to gain these and future insights is critically dependent on computational tools for the analysis and visualisation of data produced by these techniques. Results and conclusion We have developedGenomicInteractions, a freely available R/Bioconductor package designed for processing, analysis and visualisation of data generated from various types of chromosome conformation capture experiments. The package allows the easy annotation and summarisation of large genome-wide datasets at both the level of individual interactions and sets of genomic features, and provides several different methods for interrogating and visualising this type of data. We demonstrate this package's utility by showing example analyses performed on interaction datasets generated using Hi-C and ChIA-PET.