What is FastX?
FastX is an open-source command line tool for basic sequence analysis and processing of FASTA and FASTQ files. It allows users to perform common data preparation and quality control tasks such as:
- Trimming low quality bases from read ends
- Filtering reads by length or quality score thresholds
- Collapsing or expanding paired-end reads
- Converting between FASTQ and FASTA formats
- Getting basic statistics about the reads
FastX is very fast and memory efficient, making it suitable for processing large NGS datasets. It utilizes multiple CPU cores for parallel processing to maximize throughput. The command line interface provides flexibility to build custom analysis pipelines by combining various FastX commands. The simplicity and speed of FastX has made it one of the most widely used tools for initial raw read processing and QC.
Some key advantages of FastX are:
- Very fast - processes millions of reads per minute
- Low memory footprint
- Multi-threaded to use multiple CPU cores
- Flexible command line interface
- Trusted quality and speed by many sequencing centers
Overall, FastX provides a set of simple building blocks to filter, trim, convert and analyze sequence reads that can be easily integrated into any bioinformatics workflow.
Remmina, RealVNC Connect, TeamViewer, AnyDesk, RustDesk, UltraVNC, TightVNC, DWService, X2Go, NoMachine, GoTo Resolve, Remotely, Xpra are some alternatives to FastX.