Current status and future perspectives in bioinformatical analysis of Hi-C data

The spatial interaction of chromosomes is regarded as an important issue affecting the regulation of gene expression, and the high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) technology has become the primary tool to explore the temporal and spatial interactions of chromosomes in three-dimensional genomics. With the continuous accumulation of Hi-C samples and the increasing complexity of pipelines, the bioinformatic analysis of Hi-C data has been considered an opportunity and a challenge for understanding the spatial regulation mechanism of gene expression. In this paper, the current status and development outline of bioinformatic methods for Hi-C data are introduced, including data normalization, multi-level structure analysis, data visualization and 3D modeling, especially of multi-level structure at A/B compartments, topological associated domains (TADs) and chromain looping levels. Based on this, we provide the outlook of future hotspots and trends in this area. Hopefully our insight will be beneficial for the exploration of gene expression regulation from the traditional linear model to the 3D mode.