RGT: a toolbox for the integrative analysis of high throughput regulatory genomics data

Abstract

Background: Massive amounts of data are produced by combining next-generation sequencing with complex biochemistry techniques to characterize regulatory genomics profiles, such as protein–DNA interaction and chromatin accessibility. Interpretation of such high-throughput data typically requires different computation methods. However, existing tools are usually developed for a specific task, which makes it challenging to analyze the data in an integrative manner. Results: We here describe the Regulatory Genomics Toolbox (RGT), a computational library for the integrative analysis of regulatory genomics data. RGT provides different functionalities to handle genomic signals and regions. Based on that, we developed several tools to perform distinct downstream analyses, including the prediction of transcription factor binding sites using ATAC-seq data, identification of differential peaks from ChIP-seq data, and detection of triple helix mediated RNA and DNA interactions, visualization, and finding an association between distinct regulatory factors. Conclusion: We present here RGT; a framework to facilitate the customization of computational methods to analyze genomic data for specific regulatory genomics problems. RGT is a comprehensive and flexible Python package for analyzing high throughput regulatory genomics data and is available at: https://github.com/CostaLab/reg-gen. The documentation is available at: https://reg-gen.readthedocs.io.