IUBio

RFC: New chromatogram file format (ZTR)

James Bonfield jkb at arran.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
Tue Nov 7 09:33:52 EST 2000


If you are producing or using lots of chromatogram trace files, PLEASE do read 
this and pass your comments on to me.

You're first question on reading this title is probably "Why yet another file
format?". My reason is simply that we're getting more and more data to store
and so we need a better compressed format. I hope that ZTR may be (or become)
that.

The following text describes the file format as it currently stands. An
example implementation of ZTR can be found in io_lib, which is freely
downloadable from ftp://ftp.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/pub/staden/io_lib/.

The sort of feedback that would be really useful is the following:

1. Any errors or omissions in the spec.

2. Which chunk types need adding?

3. Testing the reference implementation code; any bug reports.

4. Analysis using your own data; how well is it working for you?

5. Any other public formats I should be comparing against?

Of course any other feedback is also most welcome. The aim is that a
standardised format (much like SCF has been in the past) will ultimately make
working with chromatograms an easier task, although I realise the io_lib
implementation of it is somewhat crippled by the central "Read" structure.

  James

=============================================================================

				   Preamble
				   --------

This document specifies the ZTR trace format. The format should now be fixed.

The following describes some of the design requirements:

1. Extensibility. We cannot easily forsee all the future data that will need
to be stored, so we need a mechanism of incorporating new information in a way 
that does not break the file format.

2. Compression. Rather than have a format which is suitable for high
compression (eg SCF V3), ZTR should have its own data compression. This will
allow for better and faster compression than general purpose tools (eg gzip).

3. Public. Both the specification and example code to implement the
specification should be freely available for use in both academic and
commercial environments.


I have analysed the performance of ZTR on a set of 96 ABI-3700 files taken
from the Sanger Centre. These may not necessarily be a representative set, but 
they were chosen at random. The tests were performed using the convert_trace
conversion tool reading or writing to the SCF v3.00 format.

Time quotes are real time, with three separate runs. (The system is my
workstation and I'm the sole user.) There's some variance, but I expect the
lowest values to be most indicative. User+system time is possible to obtain,
but it's harder to obtain for the "|gzip" and "|bzip2" tests; hence the real
time. Gzip, bzip2 and szip tests were performed using the default parameters
for these programs.

In these tests ZTRn refers to the ZTR format with compression level 'n'
enabled. (The default in the example implementation is level 2.) Note that
level's 2 onwards are not suitable for external compression.

Conversion	Total size	Compress times	  Uncompress times (*->SCF)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCF->SCF	7882853		 4.6  4.6  4.5	  (4.6  4.6  4.5)
SCF->ZTR1	3668293		 3.4  3.4  3.3	   4.7	4.8  4.6
SCF->SCF.gz	2392624		14.3 14.0 14.0	  10.8  8.8  8.6
SCF->CTF	2326635		10.4 10.4 10.5	   4.6  4.6  4.6
SCF->SCF.bz2	1694614		16.3 16.6 15.7	  11.6 12.9 11.8
SCF->ZTR1.gz	1688966		 7.8  7.4  7.3	   8.4 10.4  8.3
SCF->CTF.gz	1688450		13.2 13.5 13.1	   8.1  9.5  8.1
SCF->SCF.sz	1663730		15.0 15.4 14.9	  20.0 17.8 17.8
SCF->ZTR2	1611073		 7.6  8.0  7.4	   5.6  7.8  5.4
SCF->CTF.bz2	1584312		20.1 18.4 18.8	  12.6 10.5 10.3
SCF->CTF.sz	1528297		17.2 16.5 16.8	  15.3 16.4 14.4
SCF->ZTR3	1526885		 9.2  9.5  9.1	   8.0	8.0  8.4
SCF->ZTR1.bz2	1523610		13.2 11.2 11.3	  10.4 10.2 10.4
SCF->ZTR1.sz	1470725		12.9 10.6 11.0	  17.0 15.3 15.8

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				  ZTR SPEC
				  =========

Header
======

The header consists of an 8 byte magic number (see below), followed by a 1-byte
major version number and 1-byte minor version number.

Changes in minor numbers should not cause problems for parsers. It indicates
a change in chunk types (different contents), but the file format is the
same. (Q: do we even need version numbers?)

The major number is reserved for any incompatible file format changes (which
hopefully should be never).

/* The header */
typedef struct {
    unsigned char  magic[8];	  /* 0xae5a54520d0a1a0a (be) */
    unsigned char  version_major; /* 1 */
    unsigned char  version_minor; /* 1 */
} ztr_header_t;

/* The ZTR magic numbers */
#define ZTR_MAGIC		"\256ZTR\r\n\032\n"
#define ZTR_VERSION_MAJOR	1
#define ZTR_VERSION_MINOR	1

So the total header will consist of:

Byte number   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
Hex values  |ae 5a 54 52 0d 0a 1a 0d|01 01|
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

Chunk format
============

The basic structure of a ZTR file is (header,chunk*) - ie header followed by
zero or more chunks. Each chunk consists of a type, some meta-data and some
data, along with the lengths of both the meta-data and data.

Byte number   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
            +--+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+--+--+  -  +--+--+--+--+--+--  -  --+
Hex values  |   type    |meta-data length  | meta-data |data length| data .. |
            +--+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+--+--+  -  +--+--+--+--+--+--  -  --+


Ie in C:

typedef struct {
    uint4 type;			/* chunk type (be) */
    uint4 mdlength;		/* length of meta-data field (be) */
    char *mdata;		/* meta data */
    uint4 dlength;		/* length of data field (be) */
    char *data;			/* a format byte and the data itself */
} ztr_chunk_t;

All 2 and 4-byte integer values are stored in big endian format.

The meta-data is uncompressed (and so it does not start with a format
byte). The format of the meta-data is chunk specific, and many chunk types
will have no meta-data. In this case the meta-data length field will be zero
and this will be followed immediately by the data-length field.

The data length is the length in bytes of the entire 'data' block, including
the format information held within it.

The first byte of the data consists of a format byte. The most basic format is
zero - indicating that the data is "as is"; it's the real thing. Other formats
exist in order to encode various filtering and compression techniques. The
information encoded in the next bytes will depend on the format byte.


Data format 0 - Raw
-------------

Byte number   0 1  2       N
            +--+--+--  -  --+
Hex values  | 0|  raw data  |
            +--+--+--  -  --+

Raw data has no compression or filtering. It just contains the unprocessed
data. It consists of a one byte header (0) indicating raw format followed by N 
bytes of data.


Data format 1 - Run Length Encoding
-------------

Byte number   0  1    2     3     4      5     6  7  8               N
            +--+----+----+-----+-----+-------+--+--+--+--  -  --+--+--+
Hex values  | 1| Uncompressed length | guard | run length encoded data|
            +--+----+----+-----+-----+-------+--+--+--+--  -  --+--+--+

Run length encoding replaces stretches of N identical bytes (with value V)
with the guard byte G followed by N and V. All other byte values are stored 
as normal, except for occurrences of the guard byte, which is stored as G 0.
For example with a guard value of 8:

Input data:
	20 9 9 9 9 9 10 9 8 7

Output data:
	1			(rle format)
	0 0 0 10		(original length)
	8			(guard)
	20 8 5 9 10 9 8 0 7	(rle data)


Data format 2 - ZLIB
-------------

Byte number   0  1    2     3     4    5  6  7         N
            +--+----+----+-----+-----+--+--+--+--  -  --+
Hex values  | 2| Uncompressed length | Zlib encoded data|
            +--+----+----+-----+-----+--+--+--+--  -  --+

This uses the zlib code to compress a data stream. The ZLIB data may itself be 
encoded using a variety of methods (LZ77, Huffman), but zlib will
automatically determine the format itself. Often using zlib mode
Z_HUFFMAN_ONLY will provide best compression when combined with other
filtering techniques.


Data format 64/0x40 - 8-bit delta
-------------------

Byte number   0       1        2      N 
            +--+-------------+--  -  --+
Hex values  |40| Delta level |   data  |
            +--+-------------+--  -  --+

This technique replaces successive bytes with their differences. The level
indicates how many rounds of differencing to apply, which should be between 1
and 3. For determining the first difference we compare against zero. All
differences are internally performed using unsigned values with automatic an
wrap-around (taking the bottom 8-bits). Hence 2-1 is 1 and 1-2 is 255.

For example, with level set to 1:

Input data:
      10 20 10 200 190 5

Output data:
       1			(delta1 format)
       1			(level)
       10 10 246 190 246 71	(delta data)

For level set to 2:
       
Input data:
      10 20 10 200 190 5

Output data:
       1			(delta1 format)
       2			(level)
       10 0 236 200 56 81	(delta data)


Data format 65/0x41 - 16-bit delta
-------------------

Byte number   0       1        2      N 
            +--+-------------+--  -  --+
Hex values  |41| Delta level |   data  |
            +--+-------------+--  -  --+

This format is as data format 64 except that the input data is read in 2-byte
values, so we take the difference between successive 16-bit numbers. For
example "0x10 0x20 0x30 0x10" (4 8-bit numbers; 2 16-bit numbers) yields "0x10
0x20 0x1f 0xf0". All 16-bit input data is assumed to be aligned to the start
of the buffer and is assumed to be in big-endian format.


Data format 66/0x42 - 32-bit delta
-------------------

Byte number   0       1        2  3  4      N 
            +--+-------------+--+--+--  -  --+
Hex values  |42| Delta level | 0| 0|   data  |
            +--+-------------+--+--+--  -  --+


This format is as data formats 64 and 65 except that the input data is read in
4-byte values, so we take the difference between successive 32-bit numbers.

Two padding bytes (2 and 3) should always be set to zero. Their purpose is to
make sure that the compressed block is still aligned on a 4-byte boundary
(hence making it easy to pass straight into the 32to8 filter).


Data format 67-69/0x43-0x45 - reserved
---------------------------

At present these are reserved for dynamic differencing where the 'level' field 
varies - applying the appropriate level for each section of data. Experimental 
at present...


Data format 70/0x46 - 16 to 8 bit conversion
-------------------

Byte number   0
            +--+--  -  --+
Hex values  |46|   data  |
            +--+--  -  --+

This method assumes that the input data is a series of big endian 2-byte
signed integer values. If the value is in the range of -127 to +127 inclusive
then it is written as a single signed byte in the output stream, otherwise we
write out -128 followed by the 2-byte value (in big endian format). This
method works well following one of the delta techniques as most of the 16-bit
values are typically then small enough to fit in one byte.

Example input data:
	0 10 0 5 -1 -5 0 200 -4 -32 (bytes)
	(As 16-bit big-endian values: 10 5 -5 200 -800)

Output data:
       70			(16-to-8 format)
       10 5 -5 -128 0 200 -128 -4 -32


Data format 71/0x47 - 32 to 8 bit conversion
-------------------

Byte number   0
            +--+--  -  --+
Hex values  |47|   data  |
            +--+--  -  --+

This format is similar to format 70, but we are reducing 32-bit numbers (big
endian) to 8-bit numbers.


Data format 72/0x48 - "follow" predictor
-------------------

Byte number   0  1     FF 100  101   N
            +--+--  -  -  - --+-- - --+
Hex values  |48| follow bytes |  data |
            +--+--  -  -  - --+-- - --+

For each symbol we compute the most frequent symbol following it. This is
stored in the "follow bytes" block (256 bytes). The first character in the
data block is stored as-is. Then for each subsequent character we store the
difference between the predicted character value (obtained by using
follow[previous_character]) and the real value. This is a very crude, but
fast, method of removing some residual non-randomness in the input data and so 
will reduce the data entropy. It is best to use this prior to entropy encoding 
(such as huffman encoding).


Data format 73/0x49 - 16-bit chebyshev polynomial predictor
-------------------

Byte number   0  1  2      N
            +--+--+--  -  --+
Hex values  |49| 0|   data  |
            +--+--+--  -  --+

This method takes big-endian 16-bit data and attempts to curve-fit it using
chebyshev polynomials. The exact method employed uses the 4 preceeding values
to calculate chebyshev polynomials with 5 coefficents. Of these 5 coefficients
only 4 are used to predict the next value. Then we store the difference
between the predicted value and the real value. This procedure is repeated
throughout each 16-bit value in the data. The first four 16-bit values are
stored with a simple 1-level 16-bit delta function. Reversing the predictor
follows the same procedure, except now adding the differences between stored
value and predicted value to get the real value.

Q: This is a floating point algorithm and so may be susceptible to rounding
conditions. Is it guaranteed (when using IEEE format floating point values) to 
be the same on all machines?


Chunk types
===========

As described above, each chunk has a type. The format of the data contained in 
the chunk data field (when written in format 0) is described below.
Note that no chunks are mandatory. It is valid to have no chunks at all.
However some chunk types may depend on the existance of others. This will be
indicated below, where applicable.

Each chunk type is stored as a 4-byte value. Bit 5 of the first byte is used
to indicate whether the chunk type is part of the public ZTR spec (bit 5 of
first byte == 0) or is a private/custom type (bit 5 of first byte == 1). Bit
5 of the remaining 3 bytes is reserved - they must always be set to zero.

Practically speaking this means that public chunk types consist entirely of
upper case letters (eg TEXT) whereas private chunk types start with a
lowercase letter (eg tEXT). Note that in this example TEXT and tEXT are
completely independent types and they may have no more relationship with each
other than (for example) TEXT and BPOS types.

It is valid to have multiples of some chunks (eg text chunks), but not for
others (such as base calls). The order of chunks does not matter unless
explicitly specified.

A chunk may have meta-data associated with it. This is data about the data
chunk. For example the data chunk could be a series of 16-bit trace samples,
while the meta-data could be a label attached to that trace (to distinguish
trace A from traces C, G and T). Meta-data is typically very small and so it
is never need be compressed in any of the public chunk types (although
meta-data is specific to each chunk type and so it would be valid to have
private chunks with compressed meta-data if desirable).

The first byte of each chunk data when uncompressed must be zero, indicating
raw format. If, having read the chunk data, this is not the case then the
chunk needs decompressing or reverse filtering until the first byte is
zero. There may be a few padding bytes between the format byte and the first
element of real data in the chunk. This is to make file processing simpler
when the chunk data consists of 16 or 32-bit words; the padding bytes ensure
that the data is aligned to the appropriate word size. Any padding bytes
required will be listed in the appopriate chunk definition below.


The following lists the chunk types available in 32-bit big-endian format.
In all cases the data is presented in the uncompressed form, starting with the 
raw format byte and any appropriate padding.

SAMP
----

Meta-data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3
            +--+--+--+--+
Hex values  | data name |
            +--+--+--+--+

Data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7       N
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-     -+
Hex values  | 0| 0| data| data| data|   -   |
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-     -+

This encodes a series of 16-bit trace samples. The first data byte is the
format (raw); the second data byte is present for padding purposes only. After 
that comes a series of 16-bit big-endian values.

The meta-data for this chunk contains a 4-byte name associated with the
trace. If a name is shorter than 4 bytes then it should be right padded with
nul characters to 4 bytes. For sequencing traces the four lanes representig A, 
C, G and T signals have names "A\0\0\0", "C\0\0\0", "G\0\0\0" and "T\0\0\0".

At present other names are not reserved, but it is recommended that (for
consistency with elsewhere) you label private trace arrays with names starting 
in a lowercase letter (specifically, bit 5 is 1).

For sequencing traces it is expected that there will be four SAMP chunks,
although the order is not specified.


SMP4
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7       N
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-     -+
Hex values  | 0| 0| data| data| data|   -   |
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-     -+


The first byte is 0 (raw format). Next is a single padding byte (also 0).
Then follows a series of 2-byte big-endian trace samples for the "A" trace,
followed by a series of 2-byte big-endian traces samples for the "C" trace,
also followed by the "G" and "T" traces (in that order). The assumption is
made that there is the same number of data points for all traces and hence the 
length of each trace is simply the number of data elements divided by four.

This chunk is mutually exclusive with the SAMP chunks. If both sets are
defined then the last found in the file should be used. Experimentation has
shown that this gives around 3% saving over 4 separate SAMP chunks, but it
lacks in 

BASE
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3      N  
            +--+--+--+--  -  --+
Hex values  | 0| base calls    |
            +--+--+--+--  -  --+

The first byte is 0 (raw format). This is followed by the base calls in ASCII
format (one base per byte). The base call case an encoding set should be IUPAC
characters [1].

BPOS
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7       
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-     -+--+--+--+--+
Hex values  | 0| padding|   data    |   -   |    data   |
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-     -+--+--+--+--+

This chunk contains the mapping of base call (BASE) numbers to sample (SAMP)
numbers; it defines the position of each base call in the trace data. The
position here is defined as the numbering of the 16-bit positions held in the
SAMP array, counting zero as the first value.

The format is 0 (raw format) followed by three padding bytes (all 0). Next
follows a series of 4-byte big-endian numbers specifying the position of each
base call as an index into the sample arrays (when considered as a 2-byte
array with the format header stripped off).

Excluding the format and padding bytes, the number of 4-byte elements should
be identical to the number of base calls. All sample numbers are counted from
zero. No sample number in BPOS should be beyond the end of the SAMP arrays
(although it should not be assumed that the SAMP chunks will be before this
chunk). Note that the BPOS elements may not be totally in sorted order as
the base calls may be shifted relative to one another due to compressions.

CNF4
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1              N                                  4N
            +--+--+--   -   --+--+-- -  --+-- -  --+-- -  --+-- -  --+
Hex values  | 0| call confidence | A conf | C conf | G conf | T conf |
            +--+--+--   -   --+--+-- -  --+-- -  --+-- -  --+-- -  --+

(N == number of bases in BASE chunk)

The first byte of this chunk is 0 (raw format). This is then followed by a
series confidence values for the called base. Next comes all the confidence
values that this base call is 'A' (except for when this was the called base),
followed by all the confidence values for this base call being 'C' (exception
as above), followed by the 'G' and 'T' confidence values stored in the same
manner.

The purpose of this is to group the (likely) highest confidence value (those
for the called base) at the start of the chunk followed by the remaining
values. Hence if phred confidence values are written in a CNF4 chunk the first
quarter of chunk will consist of phred confidence values and the last three
quarters will (assuming no ambiguous base calls) consist entirely of zeros.

For the purposes of storage the confidence value for a base call that is not
A, C, G or T (in any case) is stored as if the base call was T.

The confidence values should be from the "-10 * log10 (1-probability)". These
values are then converted to their nearest integral value.
If a program wishes to store confidence values in a different range then this
should be stored in a different chunk type.

If this chunk exists it must exist after a BASE chunk.

TEXT
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:	      0 
            +--+-  -  -+--+-  -  -+--+-     -+-  -  -+--+-  -  -+--+--+
Hex values  | 0| ident | 0| value | 0|   -   | ident | 0| value | 0| 0|
            +--+-  -  -+--+-  -  -+--+-     -+-  -  -+--+-  -  -+--+--+

This contains a series of "identifier\0value\0" pairs.

The identifiers and values may be any length and may contain any data except
the nul character. The nul character marks the end of the identifier or the
end of the value. Multiple identifier-value pairs are allowable, with a double 
nul character marking the end of the list.

Identifiers starting with bit 5 clear (uppercase) are part of the public ZTR
spec. Any public identifier not listed as part of this spec should be
considered as reserved. Identifiers that have bit 6 set (lowercase) are for
private use and no restriction is placed on these.

See below for the text identifier list.

CLIP
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
Hex values  | 0| left clip | right clip|
            +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

This contains suggested quality clip points. These are stored as zero (raw
data) followed by a 4-byte big endian value for the left clip point and a
4-byte big endian value for the right clip point. Clip points are defined in
units of base calls, starting from 0. (Q: is that correct!?)



CR32
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1  2  3  4 
            +--+--+--+--+--+
Hex values  | 0|   CRC-32  |
            +--+--+--+--+--+

This chunk is always just 4 bytes of data containing a CRC-32 checksum,
computed according to the widely used ANSI X3.66 standard. If present, the
checksum will be a check of all of the data since the last CR32 chunk.
This will include checking the header if this is the first CR32 chunk, and
including the previous CRC32 chunk if it is not. Obviously the checksum will
not include checks on this CR32 chunk.


COMM
----

Meta-data: none present

Data:
Byte number   0  1        N
            +--+--   -   --+
Hex values  | 0| free text |
            +--+--   -   --+

This allows arbitrary textual data to be added. It does not require a
identifier-value pairing or any nul termination.


Text Identifiers
================

These are for use in the TEXT segments. None are required, but if any of these
identifiers are present they must confirm to the description below. Much
(currently all) of this list has been taken from the NCBI Trace Archive [2]
documentation. It is duplicated here as the ZTR spec is not tied to the same
revision schedules as the NCBI trace archive (although it is intended that any
suitable updates to the trace archive should be mirrored in this ZTR spec).

The Trace Archive specifies a maximum length of values. The ZTR spec does not
have length limitations, but for compatibility these sizes should still be
observed.

The Trace Archive also states some identifiers are mandatory; these are marked
by asterisks below. These identifiers are not mandatory in the ZTR spec (but
clearly they need to exist if the data is to be submitted to the NCBI).

Finally, some fields are not appropriate for use in the ZTR spec, such as
BASE_FILE (the name of a file containing the base calls). Such fields are
included only for compatibility with the Trace Arhive. It is not expected that 
use of ZTR would allow for the base calls to be read from an external file
instead of the ZTR BASE chunk.

[ Quoted from TraceArchiveRFC v1.17 ]

Identifier      Size       Meaning			 Example value(s)
----------      -----      ----------------------------  -----------------
TRACE_NAME *      250      name of the trace             HBBBA1U2211
                           as used at the center
                           unique within the center
                           but not among centers.
                           
SUBMISSION_TYPE *   -      type of submission
                           
CENTER_NAME *     100      name of center                BCM
CENTER_PROJECT    200      internal project name         HBBB
                           used within the center
                           
TRACE_FILE *      200      file name of the trace	 ./traces/TRACE001.scf
                           relative to the top of
                           the volume.
                           
TRACE_FORMAT *     20      format of the tracefile
                           
SOURCE_TYPE *       -      source of the read
                           
INFO_FILE         200      file name of the info file
INFO_FILE_FORMAT   20        
                           
BASE_FILE         200      file name of the base calls
QUAL_FILE         200      file name of the base calls
                           
                           
TRACE_DIRECTION     -      direction of the read
TRACE_END           -      end of the template
PRIMER            200      primer sequence
PRIMER_CODE                which primer was used
                           
STRATEGY            -      sequencing strategy
TRACE_TYPE_CODE     -      purpose of trace
                           
PROGRAM_ID         100     creator of trace file         phred-0.990722.h
                           program-version
                           
TEMPLATE_ID         20     used for read pairing         HBBBA2211
                           
CHEMISTRY_CODE       -     code of the chemistry         (see below)
ITERATION            -     attempt/redo                  1
                           (int 1 to 255)
                           
CLIP_QUALITY_LEFT          left clip of the read in bp due to quality
CLIP_QUALITY_RIGHT         right " " " " "
CLIP_VECTOR_LEFT           left clip of the read in bp due to vector
CLIP_VECTOR_RIGHT          right " " " " "

                           
SVECTOR_CODE        40     sequencing vector used        (in table)
SVECTOR_ACCESSION   40     sequencing vector used        (in table)
CVECTOR_CODE        40     clone vector used             (in table)
CVECTOR_ACCESSION   40     clone vector used             (in table)
                           
INSERT_SIZE          -     expected size of insert       2000,10000
                           in base pairs (bp)
                           (int 1 to 2^32)
                           
PLATE_ID            32     plate id at the center          
WELL_ID                    well                          1-384


SPECIES_CODE *       -     code for species
SUBSPECIES_ID       40     name of the subspecies
                           Is this the same as strain

CHROMOSOME           8     name of the chromosome        ChrX, Chr01, Chr09
                           
                           
LIBRARY_ID          30     the source library of the clone
CLONE_ID            30     clone id                      RPCI11-1234 
 
ACCESSION           30     NCBI accession number         AC00001
                           
PICK_GROUP_ID       30     an id to group traces picked
                           at the same time.
PREP_GROUP_ID       30     an id to group traces prepared
                           at the same time
                           
                           
RUN_MACHINE_ID      30     id of sequencing machine
RUN_MACHINE_TYPE    30     type/model of machine
RUN_LANE            30     lane or capillary of the trace
RUN_DATE             -     date of run
RUN_GROUP_ID        30     an identifier to group traces
                           run on the same machine

[ End of quote from TraceArchiveRFC ]

More detailed information on the format of these values should be obtained
from the Trace Archive RFC [2].


TODO
====

BWT filter method? Comparing DELTA2+16TO8+ZLIB with DELTA2+16TO8+BWT+ZLIB
seems to give about 4% saving. BWT is slow though, so is it worth it?
See http://www.dogma.net/markn/articles/bwt/bwt.htm for example code.
By comparison, using DELTA2+16TO8+SZIP gives abour 9% saving, although szip is 
not public source. So there's definitely still considerable space savings out
there.

PPM compression? This is a generalised form of the FOLLOW1 filter.

Rather than having format as the first byte of the data block, it's easier to
understand if it's part of the chunk header. However this makes multiple
compression/filtering harder. We could easily define the compressed data
format to be an entire chunk, so that we have chunks within chunks. In a
generic manner this allows for multiple chunks within a single chunk. Is that
useful?


References
==========
[1] IUPAC: http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iubmb/misc/naseq.html

[2] http://www.hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu/~harley/TraceArchiveRFC.html
--
James Bonfield (jkb at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk)   Tel: 01223 402499   Fax: 01223 213556
Medical Research Council - Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England.
Also see Staden Package WWW site at http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/pubseq/


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