BigBed
BigBed is a binary indexed file format used to store BED-like genomic features in a compact, searchable form. Developed by the UCSC Genome Browser project, it enables fast random access to large annotation sets by allowing queries for features that overlap a specified genomic interval without scanning the entire file. BigBed files are commonly used as an efficient replacement for plain text BED files in large-scale genome annotation collections.
Structure and data model: A BigBed file contains a binary-encoded set of BED records plus an index
Creation and usage: BigBed files are typically produced from BED or BED-like text files using the bedToBigBed
Comparison and notes: BigBed provides random access to discrete features, complementary to BigWig, which stores continuous-valued