![Ginés Morata Ginés Morata](https://www.ikerbasque.net/sites/default/files/gines.jpg)
Ginés Morata, a researcher at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (UAM-CSIC) who participates in Scientific Committee of Ikerbasque, has been elected as a member of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom.
The Royal Society is considered the oldest scientific institution in the world and throughout its history only five Spanish scientists have entered it: Santiago Ramón y Cajal (in 1909), Severo Ochoa (1965), Antonio García-Bellido (1986) and Avelino Corma (2012).
Ginés Morata is an expert in developmental biology of the fruitfly Drosophila, a specialty he has worked on for over 40 years. He has been involved in several major discoveries, including the discovery of developmental compartments, the phenomenon of cell competition, the connection between genes and compartments, the elucidation of the structure of the Hox gene complex, and the discovery of mitogenic signalling by apoptotic cells.He worked for several years in the UK, doing postdoctoral research at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council of Cambridge University. Presently he is Research Professor of the Spanish Research Council at the Centro de Biología Molecular, Universidad