Hic format is an indexed binary format designed to permit fast random access to contact matrix heatmaps. The format was designed by the Aiden Lab at Baylor College of Medicine.
The format is used for displaying chromatin conformation data in the browser. After running a -chromatin conformation experiment like in situ Hi-C, researchers can pass their results through +chromatin conformation experiment such as in situ Hi-C, researchers can pass their results through the Juicer pipeline to produce a hic file. Due to the large size of many of these files, UCSC is not able to support direct upload via our Custom Track interface. Instead, users should place their Hic files in a web-accessible space and enter the URL as a bigDataUrl. If you do not have access to a web-accessible server and need hosting space for your Hic files, please see the Hosting section of the Track Hub Help documentation.
The UCSC tools currently support hic versions 6-8.
The typical workflow for generating a hic custom track is this: