BamHash: a checksum program for verifying the integrity of sequence data

SummaryLarge resequencing projects require a significant amount of storage for raw sequences, as well as alignment files. Since the raw sequences are redundant once the alignment has been generated, it is possible to keep only the alignment files. We present BamHash, a checksum based method to ensure that the read pairs in FASTQ files match exactly the read pairs stored in BAM files, regardless of the ordering of reads. BamHash can be used to verify the integrity of the files stored and discover any discrepancies. Thus, BamHash can be used to determine if it is safe to delete the FASTQ files storing raw sequencing reads after alignment, without the loss of data.\n\nAvailability and ImplementationThe software is implemented in C++, GPL licensed and available at https://github.com/DecodeGenetics/BamHash\n\nContactpmelsted@hi.is