When the levee breaks: a practical guide to sketching algorithms for processing the flood of genomic data

Considerable advances in genomics over the past decade have resulted in vast amounts of data being generated and deposited in global archives. The growth of these archives exceeds our ability to process their content, leading to significant analysis bottlenecks. Sketching algorithms produce small, approximate summaries of data and have shown great utility in tackling this flood of genomic data, while using minimal compute resources. This article reviews the current state of the field, focusing on how the algorithms work and how genomicists can utilize them effectively. References to interactive workbooks for explaining concepts and demonstrating workflows are included at https://github.com/will-rowe/genome-sketching.