# Example usage

Below are several examples of basic bedtools usage. Example BED files are provided in the /data directory of the bedtools distribution.

## bedtools intersect

Report the base-pair overlap between sequence alignments and genes.

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed

Report whether each alignment overlaps one or more genes. If not, the alignment is not reported.

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed -u

Report those alignments that overlap NO genes. Like “grep -v”

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed -v

Report the number of genes that each alignment overlaps.

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed -c

Report the entire, original alignment entry for each overlap with a gene.

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed -wa

Report the entire, original gene entry for each overlap with a gene.

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed -wb

Report the entire, original alignment and gene entries for each overlap.

    bedtools intersect -a reads.bed -b genes.bed -wa -wb

Only report an overlap with a repeat if it spans at least 50% of the exon.

    bedtools intersect -a exons.bed -b repeatMasker.bed -f 0.50

Only report an overlap if comprises 50% of the structural variant and 50% of the segmental duplication. Thus, it is reciprocally at least a 50% overlap.

    bedtools intersect -a SV.bed -b segmentalDups.bed -f 0.50 -r

Read BED A from stdin. For example, find genes that overlap LINEs but not SINEs.

    bedtools intersect -a genes.bed -b LINES.bed | intersectBed -a stdin -b SINEs.bed -v

Retain only single-end BAM alignments that overlap exons.

    bedtools intersect -abam reads.bam -b exons.bed > reads.touchingExons.bam

Retain only single-end BAM alignments that do not overlap simple sequence repeats.

    bedtools intersect -abam reads.bam -b SSRs.bed -v > reads.noSSRs.bam

## bedtools bamtobed

Convert BAM alignments to BED format.

    bedtools bamtobed -i reads.bam > reads.bed

Convert BAM alignments to BED format using the BAM edit distance (NM) as the BED “score”.

    bedtools bamtobed -i reads.bam -ed > reads.bed

Convert BAM alignments to BEDPE format.

    bedtools bamtobed -i reads.bam -bedpe > reads.bedpe

## bedtools window

Report all genes that are within 10000 bp upstream or downstream of CNVs.

    bedtools window -a CNVs.bed -b genes.bed -w 10000

Report all genes that are within 10000 bp upstream or 5000 bp downstream of CNVs.

    bedtools window -a CNVs.bed -b genes.bed -l 10000 -r 5000

Report all SNPs that are within 5000 bp upstream or 1000 bp downstream of genes. Define upstream and downstream based on strand.

    bedtools window -a genes.bed -b snps.bed -l 5000 -r 1000 -sw

## bedtools closest

Note: By default, if there is a tie for closest, all ties will be reported. closestBed allows overlapping features to be the closest.

Find the closest ALU to each gene.

    bedtools closest -a genes.bed -b ALUs.bed

Find the closest ALU to each gene, choosing the first ALU in the file if there is a tie.

    bedtools closest -a genes.bed -b ALUs.bed -t first

Find the closest ALU to each gene, choosing the last ALU in the file if there is a tie.

    bedtools closest -a genes.bed -b ALUs.bed -t last

## bedtools subtract

Note

If a feature in A is entirely “spanned” by any feature in B, it will not be reported.

Remove introns from gene features. Exons will (should) be reported.

    bedtools subtract -a genes.bed -b introns.bed

## bedtools merge

Note

`merge` requires that the input is sorted by chromosome and then by start coordinate. For example, for BED files, one would first sort the input as follows: `sort -k1,1 -k2,2n input.bed > input.sorted.bed`

Merge overlapping repetitive elements into a single entry.

    bedtools merge -i repeatMasker.bed

Merge overlapping repetitive elements into a single entry, returning the number of entries merged.

    bedtools merge -i repeatMasker.bed -n

Merge nearby (within 1000 bp) repetitive elements into a single entry.

    bedtools merge -i repeatMasker.bed -d 1000

## bedtools coverage

Compute the coverage of aligned sequences on 10 kilobase “windows” spanning the genome.

    bedtools coverage -a reads.bed -b windows10kb.bed | head
    chr1 0     10000 0  10000 0.00
    chr1 10001 20000 33 10000 0.21
    chr1 20001 30000 42 10000 0.29
    chr1 30001 40000 71 10000 0.36

Compute the coverage of aligned sequences on 10 kilobase “windows” spanning the genome and created a BEDGRAPH of the number of aligned reads in each window for display on the UCSC browser.

    bedtools coverage -a reads.bed -b windows10kb.bed | cut -f 1-4 > windows10kb.cov.bedg

Compute the coverage of aligned sequences on 10 kilobase “windows” spanning the genome and created a BEDGRAPH of the fraction of each window covered by at least one aligned read for display on the UCSC browser.

    bedtools coverage -a reads.bed -b windows10kb.bed | \
       awk '{OFS="\t"; print $1,$2,$3,$6}' \
       > windows10kb.pctcov.bedg

## bedtools complement

Report all intervals in the human genome that are not covered by repetitive elements.

    bedtools complement -i repeatMasker.bed -g hg18.genome

## bedtools shuffle

Randomly place all discovered variants in the genome. However, prevent them from being placed in know genome gaps.

    bedtools shuffle -i variants.bed -g hg18.genome -excl genome_gaps.bed

Randomly place all discovered variants in the genome. However, prevent them from being placed in know genome gaps and require that the variants be randomly placed on the same chromosome.

    bedtools shuffle -i variants.bed -g hg18.genome -excl genome_gaps.bed -chrom

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