The Burrows-Wheeler Transform By Robert Aboukhalil October 9, 2025 In this interactive article, we explore the borderline-magical algorithm known as the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT). It powers data compression in bzip2, and is used by sequence alignment tools like bowtie and bwa, both of which were named after the algorithm. The BWT has 2 key properties: It shuffles strings such that identical letters tend to be grouped together, e.g. the BWT of coconut is tooccun. The transform can be revers...