Method and apparatus for compressing nucleotide sequence data

The invention provides a data compression method, comprising: (a) obtaining a first reading sequence and a second reading sequence from an identical source by a receiving unit; (b) comparing the first reading sequence with the second reading sequence according to a comparison condition to generate a sequence comparison result by the processor; (c) outputting a final template sequence according to the sequence comparison result by the processor; (d) comparing the final template sequence to each of the first and second reading sequences, to generate a respective difference between the final template sequence and each of the first and second reading sequences by the processor; and (e) compressing the first and second reading sequences according to the final template sequences and all generated differences between the final template sequence and the first and second reading sequences, to generate a compression file by the processor.