The K-mer File Format: a standardized and compact disk representation of sets of k-mers.

Dufresne, Yoann; Lemane, Teo; Marijon, Pierre; Peterlongo, Pierre; Rahman, Amatur; Kokot, Marek; Medvedev, Paul; Deorowicz, Sebastian et al. · Bioinformatics · 2022

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Abstract

Bioinformatics applications increasingly rely on ad hoc disk storage of k-mer sets, e.g. for de Bruijn graphs or alignment indexes. Here, we introduce the K-mer File Format as a general lossless framework for storing and manipulating k-mer sets, realizing space savings of 3-5× compared to other formats, and bringing interoperability across tools. Format specification, C++/Rust API, tools: https://github.com/Kmer-File-Format/. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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