The bed12 format

Question

[blur]

Hi, I just came across bed12 format for the first time http://bedtools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/content/general-usage.html

I didn't quite understand what "thickStart" and "thickEnd" mean - is it simply a representation of the visual line that would be drawn?

Thanks,

[zjhzwang]

You can get answer from What Does Thickstart (Col 7) Or Thickend (Col 8) Mean In A Bed File?

Answer 1

[Carlo Yague]

I didn't quite understand what "thickStart" and "thickEnd" mean - is it simply a representation of the visual line that would be drawn?

You are right. It is useful when you need to represent bed intervals for genes with introns/exons/cds/UTRs like on the image below where the thick lines represent cds.