I used Hi-C pro to align the hic raw reads and got very less alignment percentage, i.e. around 40-50%, what could be the possible reasons?
I used the bowtie2 indexed GRCh38 genome; downloaded from here (https://benlangmead.github.io/aws-indexes/bowtie)
1 answer
An alignment percentage of 40–50% is fairly typical for Hi-C data. Several factors contribute to this, including the fact that Hi-C libraries contain a sizable fraction of chimeric reads resulting from ligation events between distant genomic regions. Also, random ligation artifacts (e.g., misligated fragments) can reduce the number of valid alignments. For more details, you can see this (now classic) review: Lajoie, Dekker, and Kaplan, The Hitchhiker's guide to Hi-C analysis: practical guidelines, Methods 2015 (PMID: 25448293).
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