The International Human Epigenome Consortium Data Portal.

The International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) coordinates the production of reference epigenome maps through the characterization of the regulome, methylome, and transcriptome from a wide range of tissues and cell types. To define conventions ensuring the compatibility of datasets and establish an infrastructure enabling data integration, analysis, and sharing, we developed the IHEC Data Portal (http://epigenomesportal.ca/ihec). The portal provides access to >7,000 reference epigenomic datasets, generated from >600 tissues, which have been contributed by seven international consortia: ENCODE, NIH Roadmap, CEEHRC, Blueprint, DEEP, AMED-CREST, and KNIH. The portal enhances the utility of these reference maps by facilitating the discovery, visualization, analysis, download, and sharing of epigenomics data. The IHEC Data Portal is the official source to navigate through IHEC datasets and represents a strategy for unifying the distributed data produced by international research consortia.

Aggregate and Heatmap Representations of Genome-Wide Localization Data Using VAP, a Versatile Aggregate Profiler.

In the analysis of experimental data corresponding to the signal enrichment of chromatin features such as histone modifications throughout the genome, it is often useful to represent the signal over known regions of interest, such as genes, using aggregate or individual profiles. In the present chapter, we describe and explain the best practices on how to generate such profiles as well as other usages of the versatile aggregate profiler (VAP) tool (Coulombe et al., Nucleic Acids Res 42:W485-W493, 2014), with a particular focus on the new functionalities introduced in version 1.1.0 of VAP.