The Nucleome Data Bank: Web-based Resources to Simulate and Analyze the Three-Dimensional Genome

Abstract

We introduce the Nucleome Data Bank, a web-based platform to simulate and analyze the three-dimensional organization of genomes. The Nucleome Data Bank enables physics-based simulation of chromosomal structural dynamics through the MEGABASE + MiChroM computational pipeline. The input of the pipeline consists of epigenetic information sourced from the Encode database; the output consists of the trajectories of chromosomal motions that accurately predict Hi-C and FISH data, as well as multiple observations of chromosomal dynamics in vivo. As an intermediate step, users can also generate chromosomal sub-compartment annotations directly from the same epigenetic input, without the use of any DNA-DNA proximity ligation data. Additionally, the Nucleome Data Bank freely hosts both experimental and computational structural genomics data. Besides being able to perform their own genome simulations and download the hosted data, users can also analyze and visualize the same data through custom-designed web-based tools. In particular, the one-dimensional genetic and epigenetic data can be overlaid onto accurate three-dimensional structures of chromosomes, to study the spatial distribution of genetic and epigenetic features. The Nucleome Data Bank aims to be a shared resource to biologists, biophysicists, and all genome scientists. The Nucleome Data Bank (NDB) is available at https://ndb.rice.edu.