Developmental Biology

Train crash near Urda kills developmental biologists Marta Shahbazi Alonso and Tamara González Costa

Marta Shahbazi Alonso, 41, a stem-cell biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and Tamara González Costa, 31, a postdoc at Vienna's Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, died in a high-speed rail collision near Urda, Spain on 28 October. The crash killed 69 people and injured more than 100; both scientists were travelling to a developmental biology conference in El Rompido, where Shahbazi Alonso was due to receive an award for her work on human embryo development.

nature.com · 2026-11-02

Study on brain segmentation misreported as evidence of 'two brains'

A new developmental biology paper examining how the vertebrate nervous system forms its major segments—forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain and spinal cord—was mischaracterized in press coverage as showing humans have two brains. The confusion originated from a university press release, and the underlying research actually explores how the embryo's ectoderm gives rise to distinct neural segments during development.

arstechnica.com · 2026-09-23