Figure 1.

Example of mindist couple extraction on synthetic TFBS data

The closest binding site fitting the criteria becomes paired with the anchor and forms a mindist couple, and their distance is defined as the couple distance accordingly. If both the adjacent binding sites are valid and tied for the closest, two different mindist couples with identical distance values are generated. If none of the two is valid, no couple is generated and the algorithm then proceeds to the next binding site. Note that a single binding site does not have to belong to only one couple, but any couple formed by the exact same binding sites (in any order) is only counted once. A. The TF2 binding sites (yellow) can only be associated to the first TF1 sample (blue), as the next one in the sorting has the same label. B. and C. TF1 is associated to both TF2 sites. These couples are found twice but only counted once. D. One of the two TF2 sites is out of admissible range for the TF1 site, so only one couple is found. E. and F. Both TF1 sites are equally distant to the anchor TF2 site, both generate a mindist couple.