Illumina is committed to delivering innovative sequencing technologies, and to helping customers manage growing volumes of data output that result from the proliferation of sequencing-based research.
Genomic data compression technology from Enancio, now known as DRAGEN ORA original read archive compression, offers optimal levels of speed and efficiency, and nicely complements other Illumina informatics solutions. Enancio technology uses a reference-based compression method.
The idea is to use an ultra-fast mapping scheme to map reads onto a reference genome, and then store only the data needed to regenerate those reads: a position and a list of differences. Other data compression technologies usually suffer from low speed. Enancio technology is optimized for high compression ratios, as well as fast compression and decompression rates, while preserving data integrity. Quality scores are encoded in a lossless way using a range encoder and context models adapted to the different types of quality schemes.
In July , we welcomed Enancio to Illumina. All files compressed with the Illumina compression technology can easily be decompressed using our decompression software. The decompression software is free to download and use. Once installed, a simple command can be used to directly pipe the output of decompression on the fly into a wide range of popular mapping tools such as BWA, STAR, and Bowtie. The compression and decompression technology is also being seamlessly integrated within the DRAGEN Bio-It Platform , which provides accurate, ultra-rapid analysis of sequencing data.
Enancio is a company recently acquired by Illumina with proprietary lossless data compression technology specifically designed for genomics data. The DNA sequence is compressed using a reference-based method: reads are mapped on a reference genome using an ultra-fast mapping scheme devised for compression. A compact binary format is used to encode reads as positions and a list of differences, followed by an entropy coder.
