Dr. Periklis Paganos

Postdoctoral researcher 

Periklis Paganos is an evolutionary developmental biologist, and his research is focused on understanding how complex animal cell types and organs evolved. To answer his scientific questions, he is using echinoderms, primarily sea urchins and sea stars, that, as non-chordate deuterostomes, allow for large-scale meaningful comparisons across metazoans. He combines state-of-the-art molecular biology approaches, such as single-cell/nucleus transcriptomics with high-resolution light and electron microscopy, to define the cell-type molecular and morphological signatures and to compare cell-type-specific gene regulatory networks across animals. He did his PhD in the Arnone lab at Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italy, as a Marie Curie ITN early stage researcher, and his thesis was on the evolution of neuronal and pancreatic cell types in the pre-metamorphic sea urchin larva. He then did a 2-year Postdoc in the Arnone lab at Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italy, working on the identification of the post-metamorphic cell type and the photoreceptor system repertoire in the sea urchin juvenile. Since 2023 and until May 2025, he was a Postdoctoral researcher in the Swartz lab at the Marine Biological Laboratory, USA, where he studied the evolution of the ovarian cell types and neuroendocrine systems involved in the establishment of the reproductive potential in adult sea stars.