Slovenian researchers Mojca Mihelj Plesničar and Tina Lebar have each won a €1.5 million starting grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for projects dealing respectively with penal decision-making in the criminal justice system and the expansion of genome editing capabilities.

The two Slovenian projects were among 494 picked for financing out of 3,474 from around the world that applied to the ERC call, whose results were published by the European Commission on 5 September.

Mihelj Plesničar will lead the Sentrix project at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, and Lebar the EditYR project at the National Institute of Chemistry.

Mihelj Plesničar's five-year project - Sentencing Architecture: Building a Decision-Making Matrix - will seek to transform the understanding of sentencing decision-making by placing it in the context of choice architecture.

"Put simply, this context suggests that the environment in which we make decisions significantly influences the final decision. I want to apply this to the penal system. From the research bench, we will not only look at the sentencing ranges in the penal code and how judges choose between them, but also other aspects such as public pressure, media influence, habits, and cultures that form in courts," the researcher told the Slovenian Press Agency.

Titled Expanding the Genome Editing Toolbox by Rational Reprogramming of Tyrosine Recombinase DNA Specificities, the project led by Leban will meanwhile focus on engineering new molecular tools for targeting safe genomic sites using high-throughput experimental methods.

Existing genome editing technologies allow for changes to only short pieces of genetic code, while some defective genes can be very large. The project aims to use enzymes that naturally move long sequences but are currently difficult to modify for efficient targeting of precisely selected genomic sites. The research aims to increase the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of therapies for treating genetic diseases, the National Institute of Chemistry explained.

Speaking to the press, Leban stressed that despite the remarkable advances in modern medicine over the past few decades, our ability to effectively treat genetic diseases remains limited.

"Current advanced therapies are based on delivering healthy copies of defective genes into the patient's cells, but these are eventually lost or randomly inserted into the genetic material, which can cause additional health complications," she explained, arguing that a safe solution lies in molecular tools that can target precisely determined, carefully selected, safe locations in the genetic code.