Laurent Formery

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

🚨 My lab is hiring at all levels!

Interested in animal origins & evolutionary cell biology?

I'm recruiting a postdoc, PhD students & a research assistant to study the molecular evolution of cell adhesion using marine invertebrates + comparative genomics.

🔗: clarkelab.com/join/

Please repost!

A newborn sea urchin walking along the seabed | 2025 Nikon Small World YouTube video by Nikon Microscope Solutions

Also I have to share this winning video of an absolutely adorable sea urchin juvenile. Amazing imaging work by Alvaro Migotto 🤩

www.youtube.com/watch?si=aFi...

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 😃

Many thanks to @hector-escriva.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, #ATIP-avenir, and everybody's support who are making this possible ❤️

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

Horrifying that this received absolutely no coverage in the french medias and we are learning about it more than a month later...
Courage au personnel du MNHN 😓

Congrats Rafath! 🤩

We need more sea pigs.

Thanks Bruno!

This looks fabulous! Congrats all!

What a day for #ctenophores!!
Congrats @kei-jokura.bsky.social @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social @annaferraioli.bsky.social @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy et al !!! 🥳🥳

Congrats Pedro!! 🥳🥳

Thank you Chris 🥹❤️ It takes a great and inspiring mentor to get there!!

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 ⭐

Thanks Eve 😊

Congrats!! Can’t wait to read this 🤩🪱

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

@lowelab.bsky.social

+ Bonus baby geese 🐣🐤

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

Awesome data! Congrats Periklis 🤩

It was really fun to work with such a weird and fascinating animal as Amphipholis squamata! Thanks to everybody involved in this project 😀

This confirms that echinoderms are mostly head-like animals from an ectoderm patterning perspective, and helps us reconstruct axial evolution across echinoderm body plans ⭐

More importantly, we looked at the expression of 21 AP patterning genes at different juvenile timepoints, and found that their expression is consistent with the model that we described previously in sea stars, albeit with modifications that we attribute to the derived brittle star morphology

Among other things, we've learned that working with brittle star samples can be terrifying at times 😱

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