Intuitive interpretation of heterochromatin and euchromatin through rapid Hi-C analysis

Abstract

Hi-C is a technique that provides contact frequencies between pairs of loci on chromosomes. The conventional classification of heterochromatin and euchromatin based on Hi-C data is performed by principal component analysis; however, it requires long computational times and does not provide insight into the difference in contact frequencies between heterochromatin and euchromatin. Here, we propose a simple, intuitive and rapid method named the scaled contact number (SCN), which allows the contact frequencies to be visually interpreted and heterochromatin and euchromatin to be classified based on Hi-C results in a few minutes for long chromosomes at 1-kb resolution. The robustness of SCN was validated by confirming that SCN with reduced reads gives almost the same results as the original SCN. Overall, the approach described herein thus considerably decreases the time and computing power required to analyze Hi-C and further provides mechanistic insight indicating that euchromatin has more contacts than heterochromatin.