Allan C. Spradling has won this year’s Gruber Prize in genetics for his contributions to fruit-fly genomics and “fundamental discoveries about the earliest stages of reproduction,” the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation announced today.

Mr. Spradling, director of the department of embryology at the Carnegie Institution for Science and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, will be awarded $500,000 and a gold medal at the International Congress of Genetics, in Berlin on July 13.

Among other scientific contributions, Mr. Spradling conducted the first successful gene therapy in a many-celled organism with the fruit fly Drosophila. The recent discovery of stem cells in the fruit fly’s gut may lead to a better understanding of digestive diseases, intestinal cancers, and insect-borne parasites.

The Gruber Foundation awards prizes each year in genetics, cosmology, justice, neuroscience, and women’s rights. —Kate Moser