iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Fantastic news!!! My project ECHINODEV has been awarded an ERC starting grant 🥳🥳⭐ We will use several echinoderm species to study animal body plan evolution! Reach out if you are interested, we will be looking for PhD students and postdocs 😀

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Somehow we manage to do a little bit of research between two pastries 🥐🥖

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I would like to understand how echinoderm arms are growing, so this one would be a good fit with its excess of arms haha But first we have to see how to spawn and rear them, I dont think they have been used in labs before 😅

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Satisfying or disturbing to watch? 🤓

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

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) 🤩🌞

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Congrats Nikos! Beautiful comparative work 🥹

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Sadly this great journal would benefit from a rebranding 😔 (Unlike evodevo)

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

@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!!

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

Huge thanks to Sandie and Bernie for organizing this field trip, following a great #WPMBN symposium in Brisbane 🇦🇺

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

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

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Reposted by Laurent Formery

Society for Developmental Biology @socdevbio.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

✴️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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

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...

youtube.com

A newborn sea urchin walking along the seabed | 2025 Nikon Small World

YouTube video by Nikon Microscope Solutions

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

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 😃

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

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 😓

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

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!!

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

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 ⭐

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Congrats!! Can’t wait to read this 🤩🪱

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Awesome data! Congrats Periklis 🤩

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

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

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

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 ⭐

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 17/10/2024

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...

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

Yes that's exactly what happens in sea cucumbers and sea urchins! From a molecular point of view, that wild processus is still a complete black box. We have just investigated how the ectoderm is patterned once the pentaradial symmetry is already established by the mesoderm

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Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

Thanks! I will definitely advertise bluesky when i get a couple of invites to share

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