CytoHiC: a cytoscape plugin for visual comparison of Hi-C networks

With the introduction of the Hi-C method new and fundamental properties of the nuclear architecture are emerging. The ability to interpret data generated by this method, which aims to capture the physical proximity between and within chromosomes, is crucial for uncovering the three dimensional structure of the nucleus. Providing researchers with tools for interactive visualization of Hi-C data can help in gaining new and important insights. Specifically, visual comparison can pinpoint changes in spatial organization between Hi-C datasets, originating from different cell lines or different species, or normalized by different methods. Here, we present CytoHiC, a Cytsocape plugin, which allow users to view and compare spatial maps of genomic landmarks, based on normalized Hi-C datasets. CytoHiC was developed to support intuitive visual comparison of Hi-C data and integration of additional genomic annotations.