the difference between BED files and BedGraph files

Question

[akivab2]

What is the difference between BED files and BedGraph files? what are they each used for?

Thanks

Answer 1

[Ian]

BED files provide the coordinates of regions in a genome; most basically chr, start and end, however other fields provide greater detail.

bedGraph files give coordinate information, as in BED files, but a fourth column can be a number. The files are often used to show coverage depth of sequencing over a genome. For example, bedGraph files can be converted to bigWig (a binary indexed version) that can be displayed on the UCSC Genome Browser. Pgibas' links are where to go for more information.

Answer 2

[PoGibas]

Have you searched before asking?

• http://genome.ucsc.edu/FAQ/FAQformat.html#format1
• http://genome.ucsc.edu/FAQ/FAQformat.html#format1.8

[akivab2]

Thanks, and I did search first.

I was hoping for a more practical explanation than what is written there, maybe with an example of when I would use BedGraph as opposed to BED.