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CRAM

Definition
AI-generated

CRAM is a reference-based compressed alignment format that stores sequencing read alignments more compactly than BAM by encoding differences relative to a reference sequence.

Topics
Bioinformatics Formats
URL
https://samtools.github.io/hts-specs/CRAMv3.pdf
Related
Sequence Alignment/Map (SAM) Binary Alignment/Map (BAM) FASTA

Why it matters in GWAS

Large sequencing cohorts often store alignments in CRAM to reduce cost, but reproducible GWAS analysis requires careful management of the exact reference build used for compression and decoding.

Example usage

"The biobank distributed aligned reads as CRAM with GRCh38 references for downstream variant calling."

Sequence Alignment/Map (SAM) Binary Alignment/Map (BAM) FASTA Variant Calling
Related-term network

Click any node to open that term page.

Node order. The current term is first. Next come every page linked from Related terms, in the same top-to-bottom order as that list. Then new terms appear in two-hop layers: for each of those direct neighbors (in that same order), their related terms are appended if not already listed. A third pass does the same for two-hop nodes. The walk stops when a fixed maximum number of nodes is reached.

References

  • Fritz MHY, et al. (2011). Efficient storage of high throughput DNA sequencing data using reference-based compression. Genome Research. https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.114819.110
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