What is EMBnet?

Since its creation in 1988, EMBnet has evolved from an informal network of individuals in charge of maintaining biological databases into the only organization world-wide bringing bioinformatics professionals to work together to serve the expanding fields of genetics and molecular biology. Although composed predominantly of academic nodes, EMBnet gains an important added dimension from its industrial members. The success of EMBnet is attracting increasing numbers of organizations outside Europe to join. EMBnet has a tried-and-tested infrastructure to organise training courses, give technical help and help its members effectively interact and respond to the rapidly changing needs of biological research in a way no single institute is able to do. In 2005 the organization created additional types of node to allow more than one member per country. The "associated node" was born.