SUMMARY: DNA sequence databases use compression such as gzip to reduce the required storage space and network transmission time. We describe Nucleotide Archival Format (NAF)-a new file format for lossless reference-free compression of FASTA and FASTQ-formatted nucleotide sequences. Nucleotide Archival Format compression ratio is comparable to the best DNA compressors, while providing dramatically faster decompression. We compared our format with DNA compressors: DELIMINATE and MFCompress, and with general purpose compressors: gzip, bzip2, xz, brotli and zstd. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: NAF compressor and decompressor, as well as format specification are available at https://github.com/KirillKryukov/naf. Format specification is in public domain. Compressor and decompressor are open source under the zlib/libpng license, free for nearly any use. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

SUMMARY: G-compass is designed for efficient comparative genome analysis between human and other vertebrate genomes. The current version of G-compass allows us to browse two corresponding genomic regions between human and another species in parallel. One-to-one evolutionarily conserved regions (i.e. orthologous regions) between species are highlighted along the genomes. Information such as locations of duplicated regions, copy number variations and mammalian ultra-conserved elements is also provided. These features of G-compass enable us to easily determine patterns of genomic rearrangements and changes in gene orders through evolutionary time. Since G-compass is a satellite database of H-InvDB, which is a comprehensive annotation resource for human genes and transcripts, users can easily refer to manually curated functional annotations and other abundant biological information for each human transcript. G-compass is expected to be a valuable tool for comparing human and model organisms and promoting the exchange of functional information. AVAILABILITY: G-compass is freely available at http://www.h-invitational.jp/g-compass/. CONTACT: [email protected]