BigMethyl Track Format

The bigMethyl format allows display of methylation sites.

General Structure

The bigMethyl format is line-oriented. BigMethyl data are preceded by a track definition line, which adds a number of options for controlling the default display of this track.

Following the track definition line are the track data in 18 column BED format:

chromA  chromStartA  chromEndA  dataValueA
chromB  chromStartB  chromEndB  dataValueB

Parameters for bigMethyl track definition lines

All options are placed in a single line separated by spaces:

track type=bigMethyl name=track_label description=center_label
    

Note: if you copy/paste the above example, you must remove the line breaks.

The track type is REQUIRED, and must be bigMethyl:

type=bigMethyl

Data Values

BigMethyl track data values can be integer or real, positive or negative values. The chromosome coordinates are zero-based, half-open. This means that the first chromosome position is 0, and the last position in a chromosome of length N would be N - 1. The positions listed in the input data must be in numerical order, and only the specified positions will be graphed. bigMethyl format has eighteen columns of data:

chrom chromStart chromEnd dataValue

Example

Note: The above example is a custom track that includes a track type= line that is specific for loading the data in the browser. This line will cause a raw bigMethyl data file to fail validation by other tools, such as validateFiles, outside of the browser.