title: ChromContact: A web tool for analyzing spatial contact of chromosomes from Hi-C data.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Hi-C analysis has revealed the three-dimensional architecture of chromosomes in the nucleus. Although Hi-C data contains valuable information on long-range interactions of chromosomes, the data is not yet widely utilized by molecular biologists because of the quantity of data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We developed a web tool, ChromContact, to utilize the information obtained by Hi-C. The web tool is designed to be simple and easy to use. By specifying a locus of interest, ChromContact calculates contact profiles and generates links to the UCSC Genome Browser, enabling users to visually examine the contact information with various annotations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ChromContact provides wide-range of molecular biologists with a user-friendly means to access high-resolution Hi-C data. One of the possible applications of ChromContact is investigating novel long-range promoter-enhancer interactions. This facilitates the functional interpretation of statistically significant markers identified by GWAS or ChIP-seq peaks that are located far from any annotated genes. ChromContact is freely accessible at http://bioinfo.sls.kyushu-u.ac.jp/chromcontact/ .
authors.affiliation: Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, 812-8582, Japan. sato@bioreg.kyushu-u.ac.jp.|AMED-CREST, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, Fukuoka, 812-8582, Japan. sato@bioreg.kyushu-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.affiliation: Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, 812-8582, Japan. mikita@bioreg.kyushu-u.ac.jp.|AMED-CREST, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, Fukuoka, 812-8582, Japan. mikita@bioreg.kyushu-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Mikita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Suyama
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002875:Chromosomes / Q000235:genetics*; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D064878:Web Browser