ChIA-PIPE: A fully automated pipeline for ChIA-PET data analysis and visualization

Abstract

ChIA-PET enables the genome-wide discovery of chromatin interactions involving specific protein factors, with base-pair resolution. Interpreting ChIA-PET data depends on having a robust analytic pipeline. Here, we introduce ChIA-PIPE, a fully automated pipeline for ChIA-PET data processing, quality assessment, analysis, and visualization. ChIA-PIPE performs linker filtering, read mapping, peak calling, loop calling, chromatin-contact-domain calling, and can resolve allele-specific peaks and loops. ChIA-PIPE also automates quality-control assessment for each dataset. Furthermore, ChIA-PIPE generates input files for visualizing 2D contact maps with Juicebox and HiGlass, and provides a new dockerized visualization tool for high-resolution, browser-based exploration of peaks and loops. With minimal adjusting, ChIA-PIPE can also be suited for the analysis of other related chromatin-mapping data.