Organizational Structure

The Joint Experimental Molecular Unit (JEMU) is an integrated research infrastructure supported by two federal scientific institutions, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS, Brussels) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA, Tervuren), sharing expertise, lab facilities and research projects. JEMU is launched and funded by the Belgian Science Policy.

Scientific Mission

JEMU aims at promoting collaborative molecular research among scientists by:
– supporting fundamental and applied scientific molecular research on natural history collections within a collaborative framework.
– introducing new molecular technologies and analytical expertise to stimulate new research lines within RBINS and RMCA.
– providing standardized protocols for DNA archival and DNA database implementation.
– providing scientific support to our partners of the speciesID.be consortium (ENFORCE and BopCo).

Collaborative Research

Collaborative research can be initiated through internal research programs or joint project applications for external funding. Main research interests and expertise of JEMU are:
– DNA barcoding and species delimitation
– molecular systematics
– phylogenomics
– ancient genomics
– population genomics
– evolutionary genomics
– epigenomics
– microbial genomics