wikipedia: FASTQ format
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2009/12/16/nar.gkp1137.full

FASTQ format is a text-based format for storing both a biological sequence (usually nucleotide sequence) and its corresponding quality scores. Both the sequence letter and quality score are encoded with a single ASCII character for brevity. It was originally developed at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute to bundle a FASTA sequence and its quality data, but has recently become the de facto standard for storing the output of high throughput sequencing instruments such as the Illumina Genome Analyzer.

• text based
• no standard file extension

• A FASTQ file normally uses four lines per sequence. Line 1 begins with a '@' character and is followed by a sequence identifier and an optional description (like a FASTA title line). Line 2 is the raw sequence letters. Line 3 begins with a '+' character and is optionally followed by the same sequence identifier (and any description) again. Line 4 encodes the quality values for the sequence in Line 2, and must contain the same number of symbols as letters in the sequence.