Comparison of high-throughput sequencing data compression tools

A team of international scientists benchmark current compression methods for high-throughput sequencing data. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) data are commonly stored as raw sequencing reads in FASTQ format or as reads mapped to a reference, in SAM format, both with large memory footprints. Worldwide growth of HTS data has prompted the development of compression methods that aim to significantly reduce HTS data size. Here we report on a benchmarking study of available compression methods on a comprehensive set of HTS data using an automated framework.