PLoS Computational Biology (Oct 2022)

DLoopCaller: A deep learning approach for predicting genome-wide chromatin loops by integrating accessible chromatin landscapes.

  • Siguo Wang,
  • Qinhu Zhang,
  • Ying He,
  • Zhen Cui,
  • Zhenghao Guo,
  • Kyungsook Han,
  • De-Shuang Huang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010572
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 10
p. e1010572

Abstract

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In recent years, major advances have been made in various chromosome conformation capture technologies to further satisfy the needs of researchers for high-quality, high-resolution contact interactions. Discriminating the loops from genome-wide contact interactions is crucial for dissecting three-dimensional(3D) genome structure and function. Here, we present a deep learning method to predict genome-wide chromatin loops, called DLoopCaller, by combining accessible chromatin landscapes and raw Hi-C contact maps. Some available orthogonal data ChIA-PET/HiChIP and Capture Hi-C were used to generate positive samples with a wider contact matrix which provides the possibility to find more potential genome-wide chromatin loops. The experimental results demonstrate that DLoopCaller effectively improves the accuracy of predicting genome-wide chromatin loops compared to the state-of-the-art method Peakachu. Moreover, compared to two of most popular loop callers, such as HiCCUPS and Fit-Hi-C, DLoopCaller identifies some unique interactions. We conclude that a combination of chromatin landscapes on the one-dimensional genome contributes to understanding the 3D genome organization, and the identified chromatin loops reveal cell-type specificity and transcription factor motif co-enrichment across different cell lines and species.