biotender-max/bio-bedgraph-handling
Create, manipulate, and convert bedGraph files for genome browser visualization. Covers bedGraph format, conversion to/from bigWig, normalization, and signal processing. Use when handling coverage and signal tracks from ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, or RNA-seq.
npx skills add https://github.com/BioTender-max/awesome-bio-agent-skills --skill bio-bedgraph-handling
Reference examples tested with: bedtools 2.31+, samtools 1.19+
Before using code patterns, verify installed versions match. If versions differ:
pip show <package> then help(module.function) to check signatures<tool> --version then <tool> --help to confirm flagsIf code throws ImportError, AttributeError, or TypeError, introspect the installed
package and adapt the example to match the actual API rather than retrying.
"Work with bedGraph signal tracks" → Create, manipulate, and convert bedGraph files for displaying coverage or signal intensity on genome browsers.
bedtools genomecov -bg to generate, bedGraphToBigWig to convertpyBigWig, pybedtoolsbedGraph is a text format for displaying continuous-valued data on genome browsers. Common for coverage, signal intensity, and scores.
track type=bedGraph name="Sample" description="Coverage"
chr1 0 100 1.5
chr1 100 200 2.3
chr1 200 300 0.8
Four columns: chrom, start, end, value (0-based, half-open)
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg > sample.bedgraph
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg -split > sample.bedgraph
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg -scale 1.5 > sample.scaled.bedgraph
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg -strand + > sample.plus.bedgraph
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg -strand - > sample.minus.bedgraph
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg -5 > sample.5prime.bedgraph
total_reads=$(samtools view -c -F 260 sample.bam)
scale=$(echo "scale=10; 1000000 / $total_reads" | bc)
bedtools genomecov -ibam sample.bam -bg -scale $scale > sample.cpm.bedgraph
bedGraph must be sorted for conversion to bigWig.
sort -k1,1 -k2,2n sample.bedgraph > sample.sorted.bedgraph
LC_ALL=C sort -k1,1 -k2,2n sample.bedgraph > sample.sorted.bedgraph
bedGraphToBigWig sample.sorted.bedgraph chrom.sizes sample.bw
fetchChromSizes hg38 > hg38.chrom.sizes
bedGraphToBigWig sample.sorted.bedgraph hg38.chrom.sizes sample.bw
samtools faidx reference.fa
cut -f1,2 reference.fa.fai > chrom.sizes
fetchChromSizes hg38 > hg38.chrom.sizes
mysql --user=genome --host=genome-mysql.soe.ucsc.edu -A -e \
"select chrom, size from hg38.chromInfo" > hg38.chrom.sizes
bedClip sample.bedgraph chrom.sizes sample.clipped.bedgraph
bedGraphToBigWig sample.clipped.bedgraph chrom.sizes sample.bw
bigWigToBedGraph sample.bw sample.bedgraph
bigWigToBedGraph sample.bw sample.chr1.bedgraph -chrom=chr1
bigWigToBedGraph sample.bw sample.region.bedgraph -chrom=chr1 -start=1000 -end=2000
bedtools unionbedg -i sample1.bedgraph sample2.bedgraph sample3.bedgraph \
-header -names sample1 sample2 sample3 > merged.bedgraph
bedtools unionbedg -i sample1.bedgraph sample2.bedgraph sample3.bedgraph | \
awk '{sum=0; for(i=4;i<=NF;i++) sum+=$i; print $1,$2,$3,sum/(NF-3)}' OFS='\t' \
> average.bedgraph
bedtools map -a regions.bed -b sample.bedgraph -c 4 -o mean > region_means.bed
bedtools map -a regions.bed -b sample.bedgraph -c 4 -o sum > region_sums.bed
bedtools map -a regions.bed -b sample.bedgraph -c 4 -o max > region_max.bed
bedtools unionbedg -i treatment.bedgraph input.bedgraph | \
awk '{diff=$4-$5; if(diff<0) diff=0; print $1,$2,$3,diff}' OFS='\t' \
> subtracted.bedgraph
awk '{print $1,$2,$3,log($4+1)/log(2)}' OFS='\t' sample.bedgraph > sample.log2.bedgraph
bedtools slop -i sample.bedgraph -g chrom.sizes -b 50 | \
bedtools merge -i - -c 4 -o mean > smoothed.bedgraph
import pyBigWig
bw = pyBigWig.open('output.bedgraph', 'w')
bw.addHeader([('chr1', 248956422), ('chr2', 242193529)])
chroms = ['chr1', 'chr1', 'chr1']
starts = [0, 100, 200]
ends = [100, 200, 300]
values = [1.5, 2.3, 0.8]
bw.addEntries(chroms, starts, ends=ends, values=values)
bw.close()
import pyBigWig
bw = pyBigWig.open('sample.bw')
for chrom, size in bw.chroms().items():
intervals = bw.intervals(chrom)
if intervals:
for start, end, value in intervals:
print(f'{chrom}\t{start}\t{end}\t{value}')
bw.close()
import pyBigWig
bw = pyBigWig.open('sample.bw')
intervals = bw.intervals('chr1', 1000000, 2000000)
with open('region.bedgraph', 'w') as f:
for start, end, value in intervals:
f.write(f'chr1\t{start}\t{end}\t{value}\n')
bw.close()
bamCoverage -b sample.bam -o sample.bw --normalizeUsing RPKM
bamCoverage -b sample.bam -o sample.bw --normalizeUsing CPM
bamCoverage -b sample.bam -o sample.bw --normalizeUsing BPM
bamCoverage -b sample.bam -o sample.bedgraph --outFileFormat bedgraph --normalizeUsing CPM
bamCompare -b1 treatment.bam -b2 input.bam -o log2ratio.bw --scaleFactorsMethod readCount
bamCompare -b1 treatment.bam -b2 input.bam -o subtracted.bw --ratio subtract
bigwigCompare -b1 treatment.bw -b2 input.bw -o ratio.bw --ratio log2
bigwigCompare -b1 sample1.bw -b2 sample2.bw -o diff.bw --ratio subtract
awk '$4 >= 1.0' sample.bedgraph > high_signal.bedgraph
awk '$4 > 0' sample.bedgraph > nonzero.bedgraph
bedtools intersect -a sample.bedgraph -b regions.bed > subset.bedgraph
grep -v "^chrM" sample.bedgraph | grep -v "_random" > filtered.bedgraph
awk '$1 ~ /^chr[0-9XY]+$/' sample.bedgraph > standard_chroms.bedgraph
bedtools makewindows -g chrom.sizes -w 1000 > bins.bed
bedtools map -a bins.bed -b sample.bedgraph -c 4 -o mean > binned.bedgraph
bedtools map -a genes.bed -b sample.bedgraph -c 4 -o mean > gene_signal.bed
bedtools merge -i sample.bedgraph -c 4 -o collapse | \
awk 'index($4,",") > 0' | head
sort -c -k1,1 -k2,2n sample.bedgraph && echo "Sorted" || echo "Not sorted"
awk 'NR==1 {min=$4; max=$4} {if($4<min) min=$4; if($4>max) max=$4}
END {print "Min:", min, "Max:", max}' sample.bedgraph
Goal: Generate a CPM-normalized bigWig track from a BAM file in a single automated workflow.
Approach: Count total mapped reads with samtools, compute a CPM scale factor, generate a scaled bedGraph with bedtools genomecov, sort and clip to chromosome boundaries, then convert to bigWig format.
#!/bin/bash
BAM=$1
NAME=$(basename $BAM .bam)
CHROM_SIZES=$2
total_reads=$(samtools view -c -F 260 $BAM)
scale=$(echo "scale=10; 1000000 / $total_reads" | bc)
bedtools genomecov -ibam $BAM -bg -scale $scale > ${NAME}.bedgraph
sort -k1,1 -k2,2n ${NAME}.bedgraph > ${NAME}.sorted.bedgraph
bedClip ${NAME}.sorted.bedgraph $CHROM_SIZES ${NAME}.clipped.bedgraph
bedGraphToBigWig ${NAME}.clipped.bedgraph $CHROM_SIZES ${NAME}.bw
rm ${NAME}.bedgraph ${NAME}.sorted.bedgraph ${NAME}.clipped.bedgraph
echo "Created ${NAME}.bw (CPM normalized)"
echo 'track type=bedGraph name="Sample" description="CPM normalized" visibility=full color=0,0,255 altColor=255,0,0 autoScale=on graphType=bar' > track.bedgraph
cat sample.bedgraph >> track.bedgraph
Take biotender-max/bio-bedgraph-handling from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal
use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.
The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the
same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.