Scientists at three of the country's medical schools have joined forces in a €45 million project to uncover the links between human genes and disease.
The Programme for Human Genomics, officially inaugurated yesterday, will take a special interest in cancer, immune deficiencies and blood disorders.
The programme is a joint initiative by University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
A €44.82 million grant from the Higher Education Authority will fund over 100 researchers, research facilities and a number of new professorships to be shared between the three colleges.
It will make Dublin one of around only a dozen centres of excellence worldwide with facilities and expertise dedicated to research in the field of genomics.
Collaboration between the three schools means there will be a flow of information between scientists and medical staff in what is termed a "bench to bedside" approach.
One of the mechanisms will be the establishment of a bioresource, a biological reference library of genetic material (DNA), proteins and tissues.
"The idea is to create banks of DNA which will tell you something about a disease," said Prof Dermot Kelleher of TCD.
"For example, with a condition like asthma, you will use the DNA of asthma patients, find out the genes associated with it, isolate them, find out their mechanisms for causing disease and hopefully develop a drug to block that mechanism." The Dublin colleges will swap information with other centres around the world which are concentrating on different diseases.
It was acknowledged at yesterday's inauguration ceremony that research centres of the kind envisaged had the potential to raise ethical questions. Prof Kelleher said all the work would be carried out under ethical guidelines issued by the Health Research Board.
It is likely that one of the new academic chairs to be created will be a professorship of bioethics. Speaking at the ceremony, the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, said the programme would affect and benefit everyone.
"It will apply the latest and most advanced technologies to the study of human disease, finding new ways of diagnosing, treating and preventing disease. This is a very important for the ordinary citizen, for the man and woman in the street."