@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 ⭐

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

@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 :)