HiC-Pro Quick Start Guide

This page is just a quick start guide, please read the full online manual for more information !

See NEWS for information about changes in this and previous versions

See LOGBOOK for details about the HiC-Pro developments

See LICENSE for license information

What is HiC-Pro ?

HiC-Pro was designed to process Hi-C data, from raw fastq files (paired-end Illumina data) to the normalized contact maps. Since version 2.7.0, HiC-Pro supports the main Hi-C protocols, including digestion protocols as well as protocols that do not require restriction enzyme such as DNase Hi-C. In practice, HiC-Pro can be used to process dilution Hi-C, in situ Hi-C, DNase Hi-C, Micro-C, capture-C, capture Hi-C or HiChip data.
The pipeline is flexible, scalable and optimized. It can operate either on a single laptop or on a computational cluster. HiC-Pro is sequential and each step of the workflow can be run independantly.
HiC-Pro includes a fast implementatation of the iterative correction method (see the iced python library for more information).
In addition, HiC-Pro can use phasing data to build allele specific contact maps.

If you use HiC-Pro, please cite :

HiC-Pro: An optimized and flexible pipeline for Hi-C processing. Servant N., Varoquaux N., Lajoie BR., Viara E., Chen CJ., Vert JP., Dekker J., Heard E., Barillot E. Genome Biology 2015, 16:259 doi:10.1186/s13059-015-0831-x http://www.genomebiology.com/2015/16/1/259

For any question about HiC-Pro, please contact nicolas.servant@curie.fr or use the HiC-Pro forum !

How to install it ?

The HiC-Pro pipeline requires the following dependencies :

  • The bowtie2 mapper
  • Python (>2.7) with pysam (>=0.8.3), bx(>=0.5.0), numpy(>=1.8.2), and scipy(>=0.15.1) libraries
  • R with the RColorBrewer and ggplot2 packages
  • g++ compiler
  • Samtools (>0.1.19)

Bowtie >2.2.2 is strongly recommanded for allele specific analysis.

To install HiC-Pro (>=2.7.8):

tar -zxvf HiC-Pro-master.tar.gz
cd HiC-Pro-master
## Edit config-install.txt file if necessary
make configure
make install
For older version (<2.7.8), the following process can be used
tar -zxvf HiC-Pro-master.tar.gz
cd HiC-Pro-master
## Edit config-install.txt file if necessary
make CONFIG_SYS=config-install.txt install
Note that if some of these dependencies are not installed (i.e. not detected in the $PATH), HiC-Pro will try to install them.
You can also edit the config-install.txt file and manually defined the paths to dependencies.
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
PREFIX Path to installation folder
BOWTIE2_PATH Full path the bowtie2 installation directory
SAMTOOLS_PATH Full path to the samtools installation directory (>0.1.19)
R_PATH Full path to the R installation directory
PYTHON_PATH Full path to the python installation directory (>2.7)
CLUSTER_SYS Scheduler to use for cluster submission. Must be TORQUE, SGE, SLURM or LSF

Annotation Files

In order to process the raw data, HiC-Pro requires three annotation files. Note that the pipeline is provided with some Human and Mouse annotation files. Please be sure that the chromosome names are the same than the ones used in your bowtie indexes !

  1. A BED file of the restriction fragments after digestion. This file depends both of the restriction enzyme and the reference genome. See the FAQ and the HiC-Pro utilities for details about how to generate this file. A few annotation files are provided with the HiC-Pro sources.
chr1   0       16007   HIC_chr1_1    0   +
chr1   16007   24571   HIC_chr1_2    0   +
chr1   24571   27981   HIC_chr1_3    0   +
chr1   27981   30429   HIC_chr1_4    0   +
chr1   30429   32153   HIC_chr1_5    0   +
chr1   32153   32774   HIC_chr1_6    0   +
chr1   32774   37752   HIC_chr1_7    0   +
chr1   37752   38369   HIC_chr1_8    0   +
chr1   38369   38791   HIC_chr1_9    0   +
chr1   38791   39255   HIC_chr1_10   0   +
(...)
  1. A table file of chromosomes’ size.
chr1    249250621
chr2    243199373
chr3    198022430
chr4    191154276
chr5    180915260
chr6    171115067
chr7    159138663
chr8    146364022
chr9    141213431
chr10   135534747
(...)
  1. The bowtie2 indexes. See the bowtie2 manual page for details about how to create such indexes.

How to use it ?

  1. First have a look at the help message !
HiC-Pro --help
usage : HiC-Pro -i INPUT -o OUTPUT -c CONFIG [-s ANALYSIS_STEP] [-p] [-h] [-v]
Use option -h|--help for more information

HiC-Pro 2.7.0
---------------
OPTIONS

 -i|--input INPUT : input data folder; Must contains a folder per sample with input files
 -o|--output OUTPUT : output folder
 -c|--conf CONFIG : configuration file for Hi-C processing
 [-p|--parallel] : if specified run HiC-Pro on a cluster
 [-s|--step ANALYSIS_STEP] : run only a subset of the HiC-Pro workflow; if not specified the complete workflow is run
    mapping: perform reads alignment
    proc_hic: perform Hi-C filtering
    quality_checks: run Hi-C quality control plots
    build_contact_maps: build raw inter/intrachromosomal contact maps
    ice_norm: run ICE normalization on contact maps
 [-h|--help]: help
 [-v|--version]: version
  1. Copy and edit the configuration file ‘config-hicpro.txt’ in your local folder. See the manual for details about the configuration file
  2. Put all input files in a rawdata folder. The input files have to be organized with a folder per sample.
  3. Run HiC-Pro
  • On your laptop
MY_INSTALL_PATH/bin/HiC-Pro -i FULL_PATH_TO_RAW_DATA -o FULL_PATH_TO_OUTPUTS -c MY_LOCAL_CONFIG_FILE
  • Using a cluster (TORQUE/SGE/SLURM/LSF)
MY_INSTALL_PATH/bin/HiC-Pro -i FULL_PATH_TO_RAW_DATA -o FULL_PATH_TO_OUTPUTS -c MY_LOCAL_CONFIG_FILE -p

You will get the following message :

Please run HiC-Pro in two steps :
1- The following command will launch the parallel workflow through 12 torque jobs:
qsub HiCPro_step1.sh
2- The second command will merge all outputs to generate the contact maps:
qsub HiCPro_step2.sh

Execute the displayed command from the output folder:

qsub HiCPro_step1.sh
774410[].torque.curie.fr

Then wait for the torque mails... :) Once executed succesfully (may take several hours), then type:

qsub HiCPro_step2.sh

Test Dataset

The test dataset and associated results are available at https://zerkalo.curie.fr/partage/HiC-Pro/. Small fastq files (2M reads) extracted from the Dixon et al. 2012 paper are available for test.

## Get the data. Will download a test_data folder and a configuration file
wget https://zerkalo.curie.fr/partage/HiC-Pro/HiCPro_testdata.tar.gz && tar -zxvf HiCPro_testdata.tar.gz

## Edit the configuration file and set the path to Human bowtie2 indexes

## Run HiC-Pro

time HICPRO_INSTALL_DIR/bin/HiC-Pro -c config_test_latest.txt -i test_data -o hicpro_latest_test

Run HiC-Pro 2.7.7
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:44:23 (UTC+0200)
Bowtie2 alignment step1 ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/bowtie_wrap.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt -u >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:44:59 (UTC+0200)
Bowtie2 alignment step2 ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/bowtie_wrap.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt -l >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:45:17 (UTC+0200)
Combine both alignment ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/bowtie_combine.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:45:21 (UTC+0200)
Bowtie2 mapping statistics for R1 and R2 tags ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/mapping_stat.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:45:22 (UTC+0200)
Pairing of R1 and R2 tags ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/bowtie_pairing.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:45:30 (UTC+0200)
Assign alignments to restriction fragments ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/mapped_2hic_fragments.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:46:08 (UTC+0200)
Merge multiple files from the same sample ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/merge_valid_interactions.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:46:09 (UTC+0200)
Merge stat files per sample ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/merge_stats.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:46:09 (UTC+0200)
Run quality checks for all samples ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/make_plots.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt -p "all" >> hicpro.log
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:46:22 (UTC+0200)
Generate binned matrix files ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/build_raw_maps.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt
--------------------------------------------
mercredi 15 juin 2016, 20:46:23 (UTC+0200)
Run ICE Normalization ...
/home/nservant/Apps/HiC-Pro_2.7.7/scripts/ice_norm.sh -c /home/nservant/projects_dev/HiC-Pro/config_test_latest.txt >> hicpro.log

real 2m6.366s
user 3m24.493s
sys  0m33.151s