BAM (file format)

BAM file format
Filename extension	.bam
Developed by	Heng Li Bob Handsaker Alec Wysoker Tim Fennell Jue Ruan Nils Homer Gabor Marth Gonçalo Abecasis Richard M. Durbin 1000 Genomes Project
Type of format	Bioinformatics
Extended from	Tab-separated values
Website	samtools.github.io/hts-specs/

The BAM file format (which stands for Binary Alignment Map) is the lossless, compressed binary representation of a Sequence Alignment Map file. It is compressed by BGZF library and supports fast, random access. BAM is one of the most common file formats for raw genome sequencing data.