The Swedish EMBnet node is located at the Computing Department of Uppsala Biomedical Centre (BMC).
The node was established in 1989 to serve as a redistribution hub for bioinformatics databases to some 7-9 universities where the actual end-user services were set up. A national bioinformatics teaching resource was added. Courses were given yearly at locations ranging from Lund University in the south to Umea University in the north. A few courses were also given at pharmaceutical companies in Sweden and in the US.
Bioinformatics is now becoming an ordinary academic discipline at most Swedish universities, with the Stockholm Bioinformatics Centre and the Linnaeus Centre for Bioinformatics in Uppsala as examples of strong committments.
Consequently, the role of the national EMBnet node has changed. The node has been affiliated to the Linnaeus Centre for Bioinformatics. Its focus has changed from redistribution and teaching to becoming a knowledge resource, setting up and testing systems that can serve as a model. Keeping up international contacts is an important part of the node responsibilities. A limited end-user sequence retrieval and database service will be maintained.
