Creating filtered fastq files of ONLY mapped reads from a BAM file

Filtering BAM files for mapped or unmapped reads

To get the unmapped reads from a bam file use :

samtools view -f 4 file.bam > unmapped.sam, the output will be in sam

to get the output in bam use : samtools view -b -f 4 file.bam > unmapped.bam

To get only the mapped reads use the parameter 'F', which works like -v of grep and skips the alignments for a specific flag.

samtools view -b -F 4 file.bam > mapped.bam

Source: https://www.biostars.org/p/56246/ Sukhdeep Singh

To do this as efficiently as possible, using BBTools:

reformat.sh in=reads.sam out=mapped.fq mappedonly

Also, BBMap has a lot of options designed for filtering, so it can output in fastq format and separate mapped from unmapped reads, preventing the creation of intermediate sam files.  This approach also keeps pairs together, which is not very easy using samtools for filtering.

bbmap.sh ref=reference.fa in=reads.fq outm=mapped.fq outu=unmapped.fq

Source: https://www.biostars.org/p/127992/ Brian Bushnell