🔬 Meet Michalis Averof, ZooCELL PI at IGFL @michalis-averof.bsky.social What sparked his interest in EvoDevo? What keeps him curious after all these years? And what does he hope to discover next? 🧵 Read on to get to know Michalis through his own words. #ZooCELL#EvoDevo#genomics#IGFL#MSCA

Probably the first scientific description of regeneration in crustaceans, by Réaumur 1712 The paper starts like this: Scholars are as wary of the marvellous as common people are ready to believe it. ... 🧵 1/3

How depressing – another pretentious and artificial way to promote the star system, without ever reading and thinking about the science

Oded Rechavi@odedrechavi.bsky.social · last mo.

Gloves are off! TODAY WE RELEASE THE 1% A list of the year’s very best papers 👇 (see thread)

Pomaks, a slavic-speaking ethnicity, have faced isolation & exclusion in mountainous areas of northern Greece. When borders opened, Pomak men emigrated and Pomak society experienced an unusual transformation. Article by my daughter Marta, based on 2023 fieldwork.

ECMI Minorities Blog. Pomak Minority Women and the Fallout of Male Migration

After decades of strict movement restrictions, socioeconomic and political isolation, widespread male migration has profoundly transformed the lifestyles of the Pomak minority in North-Eastern Greece....

ecmi.de

Mapping neurons in the brain of a beetle, by Gregor Bucher's team @bucherlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Happy we could make a minor contribution by providing a Brainbow construct, which the team used to map neuronal projections Tribolium Brainbow soon available on Addgene

I almost forgot: a big thank you to Development's @dev-journal.bsky.social editorial and production teams for being supportive, flexible and responsive re: editorial communication and deadlines, during a period when I faced a serious health problem. It means a lot to have this support.

Michalis Averof@michalis-averof.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Finding molecular tags that localise fluorescent proteins to the cell membrane was the goal of our latest paper, now published in Development @dev-journal.bsky.social. The tags act as address labels, sending proteins to the cell membrane, where they highlight the shape and arrangement of cells. 2/9

These images show live embryos of animals (jellyfish, crustacean, worm, sea urchin, sea squirt, beetle) and one of animals closest single-celled relatives. They were captured taking advantage of fluorescent proteins localised on the outer membrane of cells, allowing us to observe cell outlines. 1/9

Οur recent preprint includes data from 3 new Parhyale species: aquilina & plumicornis from the Mediterranean, darvishi from the Persian Gulf I started looking for such species in 2021. Amphipod expert Oliver Coleman gave me some key contacts: Farzaneh Momtazi (Iran) & Sabrina Lo Brutto (Palermo) /1

Do you work with a strange model species and are frustrated by the lack of antibodies for immunos? Here's a web app that does some computational pre-screening for you. sixpack-abscan.serve.scilifelab.se

In animals with large genomes, finding cis-regulatory elements can be very challenging. Enhancers can be located tens/hundreds of kb away from their target promoters. We face this challenge in Parhyale, with >3 Gbp genome. We just published a preprint describing how we are tackling this problem. /1

I like this concept of the genome as a compressed representation of an organism. Not like a ZIP file that recreates the same file in smaller form, but more like an AI model where a compact sequence (DNA) generates an organism through probabilistic interactions using molecules that it encodes itself.

Kevin Mitchell@wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A recent lecture on The Genomic Code - how the genome instantiates a generative model of the organism www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAhP... - w/ thanks to @mvargam.bsky.social

Just discovered the wonderful covers of 'Genes to Cells', the journal of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan @mbsj-official.bsky.social – absolutely beautiful! here some examples inspired by mitosis, CRISPR, the DNA helix, and plant pigments

À quoi ressemble le quotidien dans un laboratoire de recherche ? En 2025, Arthur Monternier, étudiant en art, a passé six mois dans notre laboratoire. Il raconte son expérience dans cette bande dessinée. popsciences.universite-lyon.fr/ressources/l... popsciences.universite-lyon.fr/app/uploads/...

How is everyday life in a research lab? Last year Arthur Monternier, an art student, joined our lab for 6 months. He conveys his experience in this comic strip. popsciences.universite-lyon.fr/ressources/l... popsciences.universite-lyon.fr/app/uploads/...

Happy new year to all! (photo by Karl Blossfeldt, Art Forms in Nature, 1928)

That's what 'the napolitans' we up to when they briefly invaded our lab! Wonderful memories from December 2021 and November 2022. Congratulations!!

Arnone Lab@arnonelab.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Our study, just published in #ScienceAdvances and funded by @hfspo.bsky.social, explores the post metamorphic cell composition of the sea urchin juvenile, revealing that its body is head-like. Long considered brainless creatures, they’re all brain instead! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our lab studies how animals regenerate their body, e.g. how crustaceans regenerate broken legs. One of our aims is to understand if regeneration re-uses the gene networks that built the legs in the first place. Arthur Monternier, an artist in our team, captured the question in this cartoon.

What are these? You are looking at embryos of a sea squirt. Each of the 'soap bubbles' is a living cell, about a fourtieth of a millimetre in size. The outlines of the cells are visible thanks to fluorescent markers identified by Hitoyoshi Yasuo @hitoyas.bsky.social see doi.org/10.1101/2024... 🧵

How can we see the cells that make up a living organism? Membrane-localising tags can drive fluorescent proteins to the cell's outer membrane, making their outlines visible. But the tags don't work well in all organisms. How do you find one for your species of interest? 🧵 Check our latest preprint

A toolkit for testing membrane-localising tags across species

Transgenic markers and tools have revolutionised how we study cells and developing organisms. Some of the elements needed to construct those tools are universally applicable (e.g. fluorescent proteins...

biorxiv.org

interesting article by @yoginho.spore.social.ap.brid.gy Artificial Intelligence is algorithmic mimicry: why artificial “agents” are not (and won’t be) proper agents arxiv.org/pdf/2307.07515

Here it is! Postdoctoral position to identify the progenitors sensory organs in the regenerating legs of Parhyale apply here: www.averof-lab.org/pages/tracman 1/3

Michalis Averof@michalis-averof.bsky.social · last yr.

We've just been awarded a grant to study the cellular basis of regeneration – to track the progenitors of sensory organs in the context of leg regeneration, in our favourite crustacean tinyurl.com/parhyale, based on live imaging and cell tracking. The project involves some cool collaborations... 1/3

X-ray imaging of crustacean legs at the DESY synchrotron, Hamburg. Cross-section of regenerating Parhyale leg (~1/10 of a mm in width). X-rays give accurate 3D view with almost cellular resolution. With Angelika Svetlove, Kevin Grüner & Mathilde Paris @zoocell.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy

Interested in a sabbatical in Lyon? The Collegium de Lyon provides accommodation and attractive interdisciplinary environment for 1 or 2 semesters. Open to all disciplines. You can be affiliated with any local department/lab. Apply now for 2026-27. collegium.universite-lyon.fr/2026-2027-un...

Latest paper elifesciences.org/articles/107... closes an important cycle in our efforts to study regeneration: week-long recordings allow us to observe the behaviour of cells during the entire course of regeneration in a crustacean leg – bright objects in movie are fluorescent nuclei of cells. 1/6

We've just been awarded a grant to study the cellular basis of regeneration – to track the progenitors of sensory organs in the context of leg regeneration, in our favourite crustacean tinyurl.com/parhyale, based on live imaging and cell tracking. The project involves some cool collaborations... 1/3

John Maynard Smith on natural history. (London Review of Books, April 1982)

In the brain of intertidal crustaceans (Eurydice and Parhyale), circadian clock genes are expressed with a daily rhythm (24h) in some cells and a tidal rhythm (12.4h) in other cells. Two different clocks working in the same brain, using the same components.

Expression of clock genes tracks daily and tidal time in brains of intertidal crustaceans Eurydice pulchra and Parhyale hawaiensis

Intertidal organisms, such as the crustaceans Eurydice pulchra and Parhyale hawaiensis, express daily and tidal rhythms of physiology and behavior to …

sciencedirect.com

Trichoplax adhaerens is one of the simplest and most enigmatic animals on earth. Its body shows incredible fluidity, changing shape within minutes. In a recent visit by Andrea Pasini we had the chance to host and observe these amazing animals live. [movie accelerated 3x; animal 0.5 to 1 mm in size]