What is a .BAM file?
BAM stores DNA sequencing reads aligned to a reference genome, in compressed binary.
- Did you know
- BAM is the binary counterpart of the text-based SAM alignment format, shrinking a multi-gigabyte SAM file to a fraction of its size.
- It is compressed with BGZF, a blocked variant of gzip that allows fast indexed random access into the aligned reads.
- BAM and SAM came from the 1000 Genomes Project around 2009 and, with the samtools toolkit, became the standard way to store aligned sequencing reads.
- What Analyser reads
- Open scientific, medical and engineering files: DICOM scans, NIfTI brain volumes, Garmin FIT/TCX activities, FITS astronomy frames, FASTA/FASTQ sequences, chemistry structures (MOL/SDF/MOL2/CIF/XYZ), Gerber/Excellon PCB data, SPICE netlists, EDF/BDF biosignals, JCAMP-DX spectra, SPSS/Stata/SAS datasets and VTK/ParaView meshes - metadata extracted entirely in-browser.
- Depth of analysis
- .BAM is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .BAM file
- Drag a .BAM file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.