Computational Analysis of Nucleosome Positioning

Genome-wide patterns of nucleosome occupancy and positioning have greatly impacted on studies of chromatin structure, yet these studies require extensive computational analysis which is crucial for the quality of the resulting datasets and inferred conclusions. This chapter describes the computational steps required in order to estimate genome-wide patterns of nucleosome occupancy and positioning from raw data obtained from high-throughput sequencing of mononucleosome DNA fragments. Potential pitfalls that may be encountered in such analysis and computational quality controls are further discussed in Subheading 3.