Model-based Analysis of ChIP-seq (MACS) is a computational algorithm that identifies genome-wide locations of transcription/chromatin factor binding or histone modification from ChIP-seq data. MACS consists of four steps: removing redundant reads, adjusting read position, calculating peak enrichment, and estimating the empirical false discovery rate. In this protocol, we provide a detailed demonstration of how to install MACS and how to use it to analyze three common types of ChIP-seq datasets with different characteristics: the sequence-specific transcription factor FoxA1, the histone modification mark H3K4me3 with sharp enrichment, and the H3K36me3 mark with broad enrichment. We also explain how to interpret and visualize the results of MACS analyses. The algorithm requires approximately 3 GB of RAM and 1.5 hours of computing time to analyze a ChIP-seq dataset containing 30 million reads, an estimate that increases with sequence coverage. MACS is open-source and is available from http://liulab.dfci.harvard.edu/MACS.

The open source C/C++ program is available at http://www.tongji.edu.cn/∼zhanglab/GFOLD/index.html