Epigenomics is the study of genome-wide distributions of chromatin modifications. Our knowledge of epigenomics has drastically improved with next-generation sequencing (NGS) with techniques like whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) and chromatin immunoprecipation sequencing (ChIP-seq). With the large quantities of data being produced, data visualization is an important step for quality control and exploration.
Numerous software programs exist to visualize genomics data; most popular is the genome browser. These existing programs focus on a limited subset of data types such as mRNA-seq and single-nucleotide polymorphisms.
With the combination of bisulfite conversion and high-throughput sequencing techniques, it is now possible to generate genome-wide single base resolution maps of cytosine methylation, referred to as whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS). This has revolutionized the way scientists study epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression that occur independently from changes in nucleotide sequence. Before WGBS, methylation could only be determined in small regions at a time or at low resolution, but now it is possible to track single methylation polymorphisms across generations.