Systematic review of next-generation sequencing simulators: computational tools, features and perspectives

High-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have rapidly generated a large volume of genomic data. To aid the development and evaluation of new statistical models and computational methods, NGS-based simulators have been proposed to construct better experimental workflows. However, the comparative performance of these NGS simulators remains unclear. In this review, we conducted a comprehensive investigation of NGS simulators for various sequencing techniques, including DNA sequencing, metagenomic sequencing, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and bisulfite sequencing for methylation.