The Barcoding Facility for Organisms and Tissues of Policy Concern (BopCo) is a, BELSPO financed, species identification service that provides access to expertise and infrastructure necessary to identify specimens, tissues or derived products of organisms of policy concern:
- Endangered & protected species (e.g. CITES, IUCN)
- Invasive Alien Species
- (Agricultural) pest species
- Human/veterinary disease and parasite vectors
- Species of forensic interest
- Species from the human food chain
- …
BopCo applies an integrative approach, involving morphology, reference collections (RBINS & RMCA) and DNA analyses, including DNA barcoding to identify biological samples. To this end, BopCo has access to fully equipped DNA laboratories (RBINS & RMCA), an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope, and Micro-CT-scanners. As such, BopCo is a contribution of the Belgian federal government to the European Research Infrastructure Consortium “LifeWatch”.BopCo’s identification service is available to anyone requiring identifications of biological materials of policy concern. Depending on the nature of an identification request, charges may be implemented.
Check out our BopCo demo video to find out more on how we identify plants and animals using DNA analysis.
Please direct your questions to bopco@naturalsciences.be or check the BopCo website for more information.The pie charts demonstrate the diversity of identification requests handled by BopCo. Find more information about the different BopCo projects on the website.
