A financing contract was signed earlier this week by IRB representatives and the European Union Research Directorate General, said the head of IRB's PR office, Duje Bonacci.
The project, worth 550,000 euros, focuses on fundamental molecular and biological research of noncoding DNA, which makes up a significant part of the human DNA molecule. The role of noncoding DNA has not been explained yet but it is considered to be an important factor for the proper functioning of the rest of the molecule as well as for the evolution of species.
The project will be led by IRB scientist Djurdjica Ugarkovic and IRB's partners will be the Universities of Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona. The funds will be used to bring four scientists from the EU to work at IRB over the next four years and to enable several Croatian scientists to spend some time at said two universities.
IRB said in a statement this was an excellent news for Croatian science which arrived only a few days after the European Commission confirmed that IRB had been granted as much as 600,000 euros for three projects.
The statement said this was the first major European science project financed within the EU's Framework Programme, whose chief coordinators are scientists from Croatia. The possibility that Croatian scientists lead projects from said programme arose only earlier this year when Croatia became a full member of the EU in the field of science and research.