diff --git a/bin/2.1_clustering/cdhit_wrapper.R b/bin/2.1_clustering/cdhit_wrapper.R
index ebf7667..d0618b8 100644
--- a/bin/2.1_clustering/cdhit_wrapper.R
+++ b/bin/2.1_clustering/cdhit_wrapper.R
@@ -199,6 +199,11 @@ cdhitest <- function(input, identity = 0.8, coverage = 8, output = "cluster.bed"
     data.table::fwrite(x = cluster_table, file = summary, append = TRUE, sep = "\t", col.names = TRUE)
   }
   
+  
+  # cast start and end column to integer64 to prevent scientific notation e.g. 1e+10
+  # start and end are assumed to be at position 2 and 3
+  result[, c(2, 3) := lapply(.SD, bit64::as.integer64), SDcols = c(2, 3)]
+  
   data.table::fwrite(x = result, file = output, sep = "\t", col.names = keep_col_names)
 }