NGS plus plus : a library for rapid prototyping of epigenomics software tools

Motivation: The development of computational tools to enable testing and analysis of high-throughput-sequencing data is essential to modern genomics research. However, although multiple frameworks have been developed to facilitate access to these tools, comparatively little effort has been made at implementing low-level programming libraries to increase the speed and ease of their development. Results: We propose NGS++, a programming library in C++11 specialized in manipulating both next-generation sequencing (NGS) datasets and genomic information files. This library allows easy integration of new formats and rapid prototyping of new functionalities with a focus on the analysis of genomic regions and features. It offers a powerful, yet versatile and easily extensible interface to read, write and manipulate multiple genomic file formats. By standardizing the internal data structures and presenting a common interface to the data parser, NGS++ offers an effective framework for epigenomics tool development.