INTRODUCTION

The Banaras Hindu University (BHU) was founded by the far- sighted visionary Mahatma Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya, as a symbol of national revival during the days of British rule. It came into existence in 1916 as a residential university with the objective of imparting disciplined, constructive education and promoting research in a variety of subjects in arts, science, engineering, agriculture and medicine. BHU, one of the premier Central Universities of the country, has grown into a centre of learning in a vast range of subjects from agriculture to zoology, from archaeology to biotechnology and from engineering to medicine. At present the university comprises three institutes, 14 faculties and 114 departments,  and four multidisciplinary schools, one of them being the School of Biotechnology.

The School of Biotechnology was started in 1986 with an aim to provide sound theoretical and experimental training in Biotechnology for meeting the future needs of manpower in the biotechnology industries. The major emphasis is laid in the areas of plant biotechnology, immunology, microbial biotechnology, bacterial genetics, molecular genetics and enzyme technology. Several research projects funded by the Department of Biotechnology, DST and various other national and international funding agencies are running in the School of Biotechnology.

The Bioinformatics Centre at the School of Biotechnology, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, was set up in 1989 as one of the distributed Information Sub-Centres (DISCs) under Biotechnology Information System (BTIS) programme of Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. The centre was established with an objective to work as a resource institution in the area of biotechnology. The Centre is equipped with state-of-the-art hardware and software. Both V-SAT and INTERNET facilities are available at the centre for the use by the scientific community.

In a span of fourteen years of its existence, the centre has emphasized the use of databanks in the area of its specialization. Important among these databanks are those on protein and DNA sequences and so on. The centre provides training to the users by conducting seminars and workshops. The contribution of the centre to the activities of the university is in terms of teaching the M.Sc. Biotechnology Students a regular course on "Computer Applications".