Bowtie is a software package commonly used for sequence alignment and sequence analysis in bioinformatics.[3] The source code for the package is distributed freely and compiled binaries are available for Linux, macOS and Windows platforms. As of 2017, the Genome Biology paper describing the original Bowtie method has been cited more than 11,000 times.[3] Bowtie is open-source software and is currently maintained by Johns Hopkins University.