diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index ff430bc..ff71a52 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -3,4 +3,5 @@ logs/*
 benchmarks/*
 results/*
 .snakemake
-downloads
\ No newline at end of file
+downloads
+example_data/sequences.fasta
diff --git a/decompress_example.sh b/decompress_example.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..b892e9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/decompress_example.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+xz -d -c example_data/sequences.fasta.xz > example_data/sequences.fasta