What does the '#bin' mean in UCSC table browser output file?

[gary]

When using UCSC table browser to get refseq file for GATK's depthofcoverage analysis, the first column is '#bin':

#bin	name	chrom	strand	txStart	txEnd	cdsStart	cdsEnd	exonCount	exonStarts	exonEnds	score	name2	cdsStartStat	cdsEndStat	exonFrames
585	NR_046018	chr1	+	11873	14409	14409	14409	3	11873,12612,13220,	12227,12721,14409,	0	DDX11L1	unk	unk	-1,-1,-1,
585	NR_024540	chr1	-	14361	29370	29370	29370	11	14361,14969,15795,16606,16857,17232,17605,17914,18267,24737,29320,	14829,15038,15947,16765,17055,17368,17742,18061,18366,24891,29370,	0	WASH7P	unk	unk	-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,
585	NR_026818	chr1	-	34610	36081	36081	36081	3	34610,35276,35720,	35174,35481,36081,	0	FAM138A	unk	unk	-1,-1,-1,

This may be a silly question, but I couldn't figure out what does it mean.

[dariober]

From the description bin column in table refseq from UCSC:

Indexing field to speed chromosome range queries

See also http://genomewiki.ucsc.edu/index.php...ndexing_system. I think you can probably ignore this field for downstream analyses as it is only used by the genome browser to speed up queries.

All the best
Dario

[gary]

Thanks a lot for your reply, Dario.