New alien friend in the echinox lab: the basket star Astrospartus mediterraneus. A truly bizarre fractal body plan, but sooo beautiful 🤩🥹

It was awesome to finally visit the @msarscentre.bsky.social! Thanks @emclaereboudt.bsky.social for organizing, and everybody for the great discussions! + I got to experience #SunnyBergen (it’s real) 🤩🌞

Michael Sars Centre@msarscentre.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Fantastic talk this morning by @laurentformery.bsky.social @biom-banyuls.bsky.social 🙌 Laurent presented his work on cellular reprogramming and symmetry during sea cucumber metamorphosis ✨ Beautiful images and lots of exciting discussions - thank you for visiting us in #SunnyBergen!

Great opportunity to work with cool animals + Nat is awesome 🤗

Nat Clarke@natclarke.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I'm hiring! I have 2 open positions: 🔬 Postdoc 🧪 Research associate We study how animal multicellularity evolved by exploring the molecular logic of cell adhesion using cell biology, 'omics, and tool-building in non-model organisms. Come join us! Details and application links 👇 Please repost

@lowelab.bsky.social lab retreat in #Tahoe for my last week in the US. It's very sad to say goodbye to such a great group of people, and to an amazing mentor 🥹🥹 But there are new exciting adventures ahead!!

Back from a fantastic field trip at #HeronIsland Research Station. Such a great place for echinoderm enthusiasts (I counted 15 different species of sea cucumbers on the reef 🤩) Acanthaster picture taken by @Caleb Trimble

Sea cucumbers are beautiful! 🥒 This image shows the skeleton of a baby sea cucumber. Very happy that it got awarded by #NikonSmallWorld 😊 👇 Check the preprint by @PranavVyas and @prakashlab.bsky.social if you want to learn more about skeleton development in these animals: shorturl.at/J3g1h

✴️Sea urchins have illuminated fertilization 🧫, early cleavage divisions 🔬, and gene regulation in embryonic patterning 🧬. A classic marine model that shaped our understanding of cell fate and axis formation. 📸 Image by Laurent Formery #ModelMonday #DevBio

Sea urchin metamorphosis is maybe one of the most radical event in developmental biology. In just about an hour, these little pluteus larvae completely reorganize their entire body plan. Very happy that this video got awarded an honorable mention by #NikonSmallWorld 😃

I am very happy to announce that the Echinox Lab will open in the BIOM unit at @obs-banyuls.fr in January 2026!! 🥳 We will use several echinoderm species to study animal body plan evolution. 🔽 Check our brand new lab website if you want to learn more about our future research www.echinox.org

I am honored and beyond happy to share that I have been awarded an @inserm.fr #ATIP-Avenir fellowship to start my own lab to study body plan evolution in #echinoderms 🤩 Stay tuned for more exciting updates coming soon!!

My first steps into paleontology!! 😀 Big thanks to @imranrahman.bsky.social for having me on this cool project to look at some fascinating echinoderm fossils ⭐

Imran Rahman@imranrahman.bsky.social · last yr.

Delighted to share our paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social iology.bsky.social‬ with a palaeo-evo-devo perspective on the evolution of symmetry in echinoderms. Led by Steffi Woodgate with Frankie Dunn, @echinerd.bsky.social, @laurentformery.bsky.social & Sam Zamora www.cell.com/current-biol...-5

Our brittle star patterning study is now out at EvoDevo! 🥳 doi.org/10.1186/s132... @lowelab.bsky.social

Antero-posterior patterning in the brittle star Amphipholis squamata and the evolution of echinoderm body plans - EvoDevo

Although the adult pentaradial body plan of echinoderms evolved from a bilateral ancestor, identifying axial homologies between the morphologically divergent echinoderms and their bilaterian relatives...

doi.org

Laurent Formery@laurentformery.bsky.social · last yr.

If you like snowflakes, check our new preprint about axial patterning in brittle stars ⭐ We looked at the expression of anteroposterior patterning genes in Amphipholis squamata juveniles, and compared it with existing data from other classes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @lowelab.bsky.social

Birdwatching from my desk at Hopkins Marine Station (instead of working on my paper's revisions 🥹 🥲) #DoomscrollingBreak

If you like snowflakes, check our new preprint about axial patterning in brittle stars ⭐ We looked at the expression of anteroposterior patterning genes in Amphipholis squamata juveniles, and compared it with existing data from other classes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @lowelab.bsky.social

Time to recycle this xmas brittle star HCR ⭐ Happy holidays all!! ❄️🎁🎄 Stay tuned for some more brittle star data coming soon 😎 #fluorescence #microscopy #HCR #holidays #imaging

Calcein staining showing the skeleton on the aboral side of a juvenile sea star (Patiria miniata) Everything looks better with a rainbow LUT 🌈😊 #microscopy #echinoderms #fluorescence

Shamelessly taking advantage of the bluesky migration to share again some of my favorite echinoderm pics 😀🤩 🔽 Acetylated tubulin (nerves and cilia) and phalloidin (muscles) stains in a juvenile sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) just after metamorphosis ⭐

So happy to see this picture of the nervous system in a transparent Henricia sea star selected as an image of distinction by @NikonSmallWorld !! 😎 It was imaged using the see-star clearing protocol developped with @Nat Clarke ⬇️Check the paper here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Our study investigating the hidden molecular anatomy of sea stars is now published!! 🥳🥳🥳 We looked at a long standing zoological problem: how to compare the pentaradial symmetry of echinoderms with the bilateral symmetry of their relatives? Check what we found here 🔽 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hello free world :)