Question about BED format - chromStart and End

[cliff]

I am a bit confused about the chromStart and chromEnd positions in the BED format.

According to UCSC:
chromStart - The starting position of the feature in the chromosome or scaffold. The first base in a chromosome is numbered 0.
chromEnd - The ending position of the feature in the chromosome or scaffold. The chromEnd base is not included in the display of the feature. For example, the first 100 bases of a chromosome are defined as chromStart=0, chromEnd=100, and span the bases numbered 0-99.

Assuming I download a bed file for a gene from UCSC as below:

chromStart: 300
chromEnd: 500

Now, I get a set of SNPs by mapping reads to hg18 and calling SNPs using whatever SNPcaller. I want to know how many SNPs were called within the above gene. Should I compare each SNP position with the gene range as

300<=SNP_POSITION<=500

or

301<=SNP_POSITION<=500

or

301<=SNP_POSITION<=499

?

Does anyone know which is correct?

Thanks

[ffinkernagel]

300 <= x < 500

so the first base is no. 300, the last base is no .499, and the range covers 200 bases.
Just as the doc says. You may imagine the mark being between the bases.

[lh3]

301st<=snp_position<=500th

EDIT:

BED is always 0-based. The first base in a sequence has coordinate 0 and therefore coordinate 300 denotes the 301st base. A more obvious example is

0 1

which denotes the first base.

[Hena]

It depends on how the range is defined: 0 based or 1 based positions? If one based, then 301 <= SNP_POSITION <= 500 is the range you had in the bed file.

[ndaniel]

300 <= x < 500

[ndaniel]

301st<=snp_position<=500th

EDIT:

BED is always 0-based. The first base in a sequence has coordinate 0 and therefore coordinate 300 denotes the 301st base. A more obvious example is

0 1

which denotes the first base.

In case that everything is zero-based one has for example for range 3 (instead of 300) to 5 (instead of 500):


0123456789 <-- positions
---gg----- <-- gene in range [3,5)


therefore the correct answer is 300<=x<500!