2026/05/20 by Sebastian Beier, Anthony Bolger, Marie Bolger +2 · 1 voice
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Genomics and Rare Diseases
paper · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btag331
openalex publication_date 2026/05/20 · openalex created_date 2026/05/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
MOTIVATION: Trimmomatic is a widely adopted tool for preprocessing high-throughput sequencing data, particularly from Illumina platforms. Since its original publication in 2014, the volume and complexity of sequencing data have increased dramatically, necessitating continuous tool evolution. RESULTS: We present the substantial updates to Trimmomatic over the past decade. Key enhancements include a robust multithreading model for high-performance parallel processing, parallel GZIP/BZIP2 compression, and a suite of new trimming and filtering steps to provide users with more flexible quality control. Usability has been significantly improved through automatic PHRED encoding detection and simplified file handling. The codebase has also been modernized including Maven support, and continuous integration to ensure long-term sustainability and community contributions. These updates solidify Trimmomatic's role as an efficient, flexible, and essential tool in modern bioinformatics pipelines. AVAILABILITY: Trimmomatic remains open-source under the GPL V3 license, with the latest version available at https://github.com/usadellab/Trimmomatic and also on our website https://www.plabipd.de/trimmomaticmain.html (DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18678155).