Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Laurent Formery

@laurentformery.bsky.social

690 followers 300 following 35 posts

Group leader at @obs-banyuls.fr starting January 2026 Interested in body plan and life cycle evolution Love EvoDevo, weird animals, geek stuff | 🏳️‍🌈 ▶️ https://www.echinox.org/

www.echinox.org

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Reposted by Laurent Formery

Nat Clarke @natclarke.bsky.social · 4h

🚨 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!

1 47 48

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 12d

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...

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

YouTube video by Nikon Microscope Solutions

www.youtube.com

2 17

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 12d

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 😃

2 30 86

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 28d

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

1 7

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 28d

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

10 10 65

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · 28d

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 😓

1 1 2

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Aug 28

Congrats Rafath! 🤩

1 2

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Aug 25

We need more sea pigs.

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Aug 7

Thanks Bruno!

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Aug 7

This looks fabulous! Congrats all!

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 28

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

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 28

Congrats Pedro!! 🥳🥳

1 1

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 27

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

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 26

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!!

17 6 55

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 26

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 · Jun 26

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

A new Cambrian stem-group echinoderm reveals the evolution of the anteroposterior axis

Woodgate et al. describe a new bilaterally symmetrical echinoderm, Atlascystis acantha, from the Cambrian of Morocco. Comparisons of plate growth with other echinoderms reveal that Atlascystis possess...

www.cell.com

3 11

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 6

Thanks Eve 😊

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Jun 2

Congrats!! Can’t wait to read this 🤩🪱

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · May 31

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

@lowelab.bsky.social

20 58

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Apr 16

+ Bonus baby geese 🐣🐤

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Apr 16

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

1 1 14

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Mar 28

Awesome data! Congrats Periklis 🤩

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Feb 17

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

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Feb 17

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

1 5 15

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Feb 17

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

1 4

Laurent Formery @laurentformery.bsky.social · Feb 17

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

1 1 16