jChIP: a graphical environment for exploratory ChIP-Seq data analysis

BACKGROUND: Chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with next-generation sequencing (ChIP-Seq) provides a powerful tool for discovering protein-DNA interactions. Still, the computational analysis of the great amount of ChIP-Seq data generated, involving mapping of raw data to reference genome, has been a bottle neck for most of researchers in the transcriptional and epigenetic fields. Thus, user-friendly ChIP-Seq processing method sare much needed to enable greater community of computational and bench biologists to exploit the power of ChIP-Seq technology . FINDINGS: jChIP is a graphical tool that was developed to analyze and display ChIP-Seq data. It matches reads to the corresponding loci downloaded from Ensembl Genes or Ensembl Regulation databases. jChIP provides a friendly interface for exploratory analysis of mapped reads as well as peak calling data. The built-in functions for graphical display of reads distribution allows to evaluate the quality and meaning of ChIP-Seq data. CONCLUSION: jChIP is a user-friendly GUI-based software for the analysis of ChIP-Seq data within context of known genomic features. Further, jChIP provides tools for discovering new and refining known genome-wide protein binding patterns.