Evolution and Development Research Group

Department of Zoology
University of Oxford

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Dr Atsuko Sato

AXA Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oxford

(Atsuko was formerly a Ray Lankester Investigator at the Marine Biological Association, Plymouth, and before that an Ishizaka Foundation PhD student and an Oxford Kobe Scholar in Peter Holland’s lab in Oxford)

 
 
Before coming to the UK, I studied the developmental biology of crinoids (sea lilies and feather stars) 
at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, and as a Japan Society for the 
Promotion of Science postgraduate student at the Seto Marine Biological laboratory, Kyoto University. 
During my D. Phil. at the University of Oxford, I studied pterobranch hemichordates, close relatives 
of chordates, to investigate the origin and evolution of the vertebrate body plan. I defended my DPhil in
April 2008 and after a 5-month Ray Lankester Investigatorship at the Marine Biological Association in 
Plymouth, UK, I returned to Oxford to join Dr Seb Shimeld’s lab.
 
My current research interest is the role of the environment in the origin and evolution of the vertebrate
body plan. In addition to pterobranch hemichordates, I am using sea squirts (a group of marine
invertebrate chordates), so as to investigate the transition between non-chordates and vertebrates. 
My wider interests include developmental biology, evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology. 
 
 

       Colony and single individual of pterobranch Rhabdopleura compacta

Recent publications

Sato, A., White-Cooper, H., Doggett, K. and Holland, P.W.H. (2009) Degenerate evolution of the hedgehog gene in a hemichordate lineage. PNAS 106, 7491-7494.

Sato, A. and Holland, P.W.H. (2008) Asymmetry in a pterobranch hemichordate and the evolution of left-right patterning. Developmental Dynamics. 237, 3634-3639.

Sato, A., Bishop, J.D.D. and Holland, P.W.H. (2008) Developmental biology of pterobranch hemichordates: history and perspectives. Genesis 46, 587-591

Sato, A., Rickards, B. and Holland, P.W.H. (2008) The origins of graptolites and other pterobranchs: a journey from ‘Polyzoa’. Lethaia 41, 303 - 316.

Sato, A. (2008) Seasonal reproductive activity in the pterobranch hemichordate Rhabdopleura compacta. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK 88, 1033-1041.

Contact details

Atsuko Sato
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford,
South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS

e-mail: atsuko.sato@zoo.ox.ac.uk