login

The Sequence Alignment/Map format and SAMtools

BioinformaticsPublished 8 June 2009Open access
Heng Li, Bob Handsaker, Alec Wysoker, Tim Fennell, Jue Ruan, Nils Homer
Citations67,511
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score2.45
SNIP1.47
View PDF

Abstract

SUMMARY: The Sequence Alignment/Map (SAM) format is a generic alignment format for storing read alignments against reference sequences, supporting short and long reads (up to 128 Mbp) produced by different sequencing platforms. It is flexible in style, compact in size, efficient in random access and is the format in which alignments from the 1000 Genomes Project are released. SAMtools implements various utilities for post-processing alignments in the SAM format, such as indexing, variant caller and alignment viewer, and thus provides universal tools for processing read alignments. AVAILABILITY: http://samtools.sourceforge.net.

Keywords

Computer ScienceBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology