Input files

RnaChipIntegrator expects two input files: a list of genes and a list of peaks.

‘Genes’ data file

The ‘genes’ data file must be a tab-delimited file with at least 5 columns of data for each gene or genomic feature (one per line):

ID  chr  start  end  strand

where:

  • chr is chromosome the gene appears on

  • start and end define the limits of the gene

  • strand is the strand direction (either + or -)

  • ID is a name which is used to identify the gene in the output.

Optionally there can be a sixth column:

ID  chr  start  end  strand  DE_flag

If DE_flag is present then it can be used to indicate whether the gene should be considered to be differentially expressed (DE_flag = 1) or not (DE_flag = 0); see Only using differentially expressed genes (--only-DE).

Note that any additional columns are ignored.

Note that lines in the input file are ignored in the following cases:

  • Line starts with the hash character # (considered to be a comment or header line)

  • First line has non-integer values for start and end, or an invalid value for the strand (considered to a header line)

The following are critical errors which will cause the program to terminate prematurely:

  • Line has values in either the start or end columns which aren’t integers, or a value in the strand column which isn’t either a + or - character (except if it’s the first line in the file)

  • Line has a start value which is greater than the end value

  • Line doesn’t contain at least five columns.

The program issues a warning for each problem line that it encounters.

‘Peaks’ data file

The ‘peaks’ data file must be a tab-delimited file with at least 3 columns of data for each peak (one per line). By default the first 3 columns should be:

chrom  start  end

where:

  • chrom is the chromosome that the peak appears on

  • start and end define the limits of the peak region

Warning

start and end positions must differ by at least 1bp, and the end must come after the start.

Any additional columns found in the file are ignored (unless the --peak_id option is used to specify an additional column with names to associate with each peak - see Specifying an ID for input peaks (--peak_id).)

Note that lines in the input file are ignored in any of the following cases:

  • Line starts with the hash character # (considered to be a comment line)

  • Line has values in either the start or end columns which aren’t integers

  • Line doesn’t contain at least three columns.

The program issues a warning for each line that is skipped.

Note

In previous versions of RnaChipIntegrator a distinction was made between peak ‘regions’ and peak ‘summits’, depending on whether the start and end positions defined a region of width 1 (i.e. a summit) or greater than 1 (i.e. a region).

For this version of the program no distinction is made and the same analyses are performed regardless of whether the data define summits or regions.

Note

The --peak_cols option can be used to specify an arbitrary set of three columns to use for the chromosome and start and end positions. For example:

--peak_cols=2,4,5

will use the values from the 2nd, 4th and 5th columns for chrom, start and end respectively.