MHiC, an integrated user-friendly tool for the identification and visualization of significant interactions in Hi-C data

BMC Genomics. 2020 Mar 12;21(1):225. doi: 10.1186/s12864-020-6636-7.

Abstract

Background: Hi-C is a molecular biology technique to understand the genome spatial structure. However, data obtained from Hi-C experiments is biased. Therefore, several methods have been developed to model Hi-C data and identify significant interactions. Each method receives its own Hi-C data structure and only work on specific operating systems.

Results: We introduce MHiC (Multi-function Hi-C data analysis tool), a tool to identify and visualize statistically signifiant interactions from Hi-C data. The MHiC tool (i) works on different operating systems, (ii) accepts various Hi-C data structures from different Hi-C analysis tools such as HiCUP or HiC-Pro, (iii) identify significant Hi-C interactions with GOTHiC, HiCNorm and Fit-Hi-C methods and (iv) visualizes interactions in Arc or Heatmap diagram. MHiC is an open-source tool which is freely available for download on https://github.com/MHi-C.

Conclusions: MHiC is an integrated tool for the analysis of high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) data.

Keywords: Chromosome conformation capture; Contact map; Hi-C; Hi-C data visualization; Statistically significant interactions.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Chromatin / chemistry*
  • Chromatin / genetics
  • Chromosomes / chemistry
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Humans
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Conformation
  • User-Computer Interface

Substances

  • Chromatin