Methods, systems, and computer programs for compressing nucleic acid sequence data. A method can include obtaining nucleic acid sequence data representing: (i) a read sequence, and (ii) a plurality of quality scores, determining whether the read sequence includes at least one “N” base, based on a determination that the read sequence does not include at least one “N” base, generating a first encoded data set by using a first encoding process to encode each of the quality scores of the read sequence using a base-(x minus 1) number, where x is an integer representing a number of different quality scores used by the nucleic acid sequencing device, and using a second encoding process to encode the first encoded data set, thereby compressing the data to be compressed.