The Distributed Information Sub Centre was established by the DBT, New Delhi at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh in the academic session 1988 89. The main function of the Centre is to act as a member of Bioinformatics Network System for providing information to the interested users on topics pertaining to the relevant areas of Biotechnology specially protein folding and design, protein structure and protein engineering. The functions of the Centre include, among others, acquisition, creation and development of programmes and databases needed by the users.

For the last several years, Centre is contributing significantly for the manpower development by organizing workshops and courses in the field of bioinformatics. Since its inception the Centre has organized 17 national level bioinformatics workshops and trained more than 400 participants from different universities and institutions. Centre is regularly organizing seminar lecture for the benefit of students, researchers and scientists working the area of biotechnology or in the areas related to biotechnology. Centre is regularly providing Internet facility for its users since 1994. Recently a dedicated 512 kbps BSNL leased line and a 2 mbps broadband connection has been installed and is functioning satisfactorily in providing online literature search etc.