CIGAR stands for Compact Idiosyncratic Gapped Alignment Report and is a format used in bioinformatics to represent the alignment of sequences, particularly in the context of variant calling and analysis. It provides a concise way to visualize and communicate how sequences are aligned, indicating discrepancies and variations between them, which is essential for interpreting genomic data accurately. This format is closely related to the SAM/BAM and VCF formats, which are also integral for managing and representing genomic alignments and variants.
congrats on reading the definition of CIGAR. now let's actually learn it.