ULB Research ⤶	Description of the Unit	Projects of the Unit	Composition
Collaborations of the Unit	Protected technologies	Publications	Skills

Molecular Biology and Biotechnologies

The ULB has an outstanding tradition of research in the fields of organic chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology. Back in the 1940's, Jean Brachet (1909-1988), one of the discoverers of RNA, and with him the whole ''Groupe du Rouge-Cloître'', played a major global role in the molecular biology revolution. Working at the ULB, this outstanding phalanx trained generations of researchers at the highest level, as evidenced by the number of ULB professors awarded Francqui Prizes by international juries. The current upholders of this tradition are studying the role played by genes and their expression mechanisms, with a special focus on regulatory cascades. This work is helping us to gain a better understanding of cell physiology (whether in bacteria, yeasts, parasites or mammals), embryo development, and certain infectious diseases such as the AIDS HIV virus or that of bovine leukaemia. Technologies using molecular biology are omnipresent throughout the ULB in all life science fields. They are used extensively for research in the fields of oncology, immunology, neuroscience, genetics, but also in agronomics, for studying evolution or animal communities. ULB researchers rely on technological platforms equipped with the latest facilities and operated by highly skilled staff, especially on the campus of the Erasmus teaching hospital in Brussels and at the Biopark Charleroi Brussels South.

Neurosciences

Understanding how the brain functions is undoubtedly one of the most exciting challenges science has to offer, as the brain is not just the most complex structure of the living world, but also plays a major role in what distinguishes us as humans. But understanding the brain is also a major societal issue, with societies confronted by the scourge of neurological diseases, and in particular neurodegenerative diseases associated with aging. What is at stake is, for example, to understand how 20,000 genes control the ''wiring'' of billions of synapses linking up our neurons, what influence the environment has on brain development, from embryo to the young adult, and on age-related degradations, and which mechanisms lead to such diseases as epilepsy, autism, addiction or Alzheimer. To explain how the brain works - or doesn't work -, we need to study the different mechanisms at work on very different scales, from genes to neurons, neural circuits, perception, behaviour and consciousness. Neuroscience research is thus eminently multidisciplinary, ranging from molecular processes to cognitive science, via neurophysiology and neuro-imaging. At the ULB, all this expertise is gathered together in the ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI), the home of more than 150 researchers coming from 17 research groups from four faculties. UNI research relies on clinical research. It has at its disposal an exceptional equipment park, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, electro-encephalography and magneto-encephalography, and enabling the study of how neurons function when executing a specific action, with a temporal resolution in the order of one millisecond.