HapZipper

HapZipper compresses HapMap single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) datasets losslessly to reduce storage and transmission requirements for large-scale genomic data.

Key Features:

• Lossless Compression: Ensures no genetic information is lost, preserving SNP genotypes for downstream genomic analyses.
• Tailored Methodology: Leverages the specific file format and biological properties of HapMap data to achieve higher compression than generic compressors such as gzip, bzip2, and lzma.
• Benchmark Performance: Demonstrated compression of HapMap 3 population datasets to less than 5% of their original size.

Scientific Applications:

• Efficient Storage: Reduces disk footprint of HapMap and other SNP genotype datasets to facilitate large-scale data management.
• Faster Data Transmission: Lowers transferred data volumes to accelerate network transfer of genomic datasets between collaborators.
• Collaborative Data Sharing: Enables distribution of complete lossless SNP datasets in collaborative projects without information loss.
• Reduced Computational Costs: Decreases I/O and storage-related costs associated with processing and archiving large HapMap SNP datasets.

Methodology:

The algorithm implements a lossless compression scheme specifically optimized for the structure and characteristics of HapMap SNP genotype data, exploiting patterns within SNP datasets that generic compressors (gzip, bzip2, lzma) do not target.