---
title: "RustQC"
description: "Fast genomics quality control tools for sequencing data, written in Rust"
url: "https://phil.ewels.co.uk/projects/rustqc"
site: "phil.ewels.co.uk"
author: "Phil Ewels"
section: "Projects"
group: "Work projects"
website: "https://seqeralabs.github.io/RustQC/"
github: "https://github.com/seqeralabs/RustQC"
---

# RustQC

> Fast genomics quality control tools for sequencing data, written in Rust

[**RustQC**](https://seqeralabs.github.io/RustQC/) is a suite of fast QC tools for sequencing data, compiled to a single static binary with no runtime dependencies.
It reimplements a collection of widely-used bioinformatics QC tools in [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/), producing format- and numerically-identical outputs whilst running dramatically faster.

The first release focuses on RNA-seq QC. A single `rustqc rna` command runs the equivalent of dupRadar, featureCounts, preseq, Qualimap, samtools and a suite of RSeQC tools in one pass. On a large paired-end RNA-seq BAM, RustQC finishes in around 15 minutes — compared with over 15 hours to run the upstream tools sequentially.

RustQC was developed at [Seqera](https://phil.ewels.co.uk/work/seqera) as a practical demonstration of the principles behind [rewrites.bio](https://phil.ewels.co.uk/projects/rewrites-bio): modernising foundational bioinformatics tools with the help of AI coding assistants, whilst keeping the original authors' science intact. All outputs are validated against the upstream tools and remain compatible with [MultiQC](https://phil.ewels.co.uk/projects/multiqc) for reporting.

It is designed to slot into the [nf-core/rnaseq](https://nf-co.re/rnaseq) pipeline, but works anywhere — just run `rustqc rna sample.bam --gtf genes.gtf --outdir results/`.

For more information, see the [RustQC documentation](https://seqeralabs.github.io/RustQC/) and source code on [GitHub](https://github.com/seqeralabs/RustQC).

---

From the personal website of Phil Ewels, a software developer and bioinformatician in Stockholm, Sweden: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/
The whole site as Markdown: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/llms.txt