PD Dr. Thomas Stach erforscht die vergleichende Morphologie und Genomik von Appendikularien (Tunikaten), einer Gruppe mariner Chordaten mit großer evolutionärer Bedeutung. Sein aktueller Fokus liegt auf der detaillierten 3D-Anatomie von Appendikularien-Organen (insbesondere Endostyle), der Sequenzierung und Analyse mitochondrialer Genome sowie der Charakterisierung von Organstrukturen mittels hochauflösender bildgebender Verfahren. Die Arbeiten tragen zum Verständnis der Chordata-Evolution bei und liefern methodische Grundlagen für die nicht-invasive Analyse komplexer biologischer Strukturen, die auch auf parasitäre Pflanze-Wirt-Interaktionen anwendbar sind.
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PD Dr. Thomas Stach
HU-FIS-Profil ↗Entschlüsselung des ersten kompletten mitochondrialen Genoms einer Appendikularie (Chordata: Tunicata)
university
Förderer: DFG Sachbeihilfe Zeitraum: 06/2012 - 12/2017 Projektleitung: PD Dr. Thomas Stach
Förderer: DFG Sachbeihilfe Zeitraum: 06/2014 - 08/2014 Projektleitung: PD Dr. Thomas Stach
Förderer: German-Israeli Foundation Zeitraum: 01/2019 - 12/2022 Projektleitung: PD Dr. Thomas Stach
Frontiers in Zoology · DOI
BACKGROUND: Invertebrate nervous systems are highly disparate between different taxa. This is reflected in the terminology used to describe them, which is very rich and often confusing. Even very general terms such as 'brain', 'nerve', and 'eye' have been used in various ways in the different animal groups, but no consensus on the exact meaning exists. This impedes our understanding of the architecture of the invertebrate nervous system in general and of evolutionary transformations of nervous system characters between different taxa. RESULTS: We provide a glossary of invertebrate neuroanatomical terms with a precise and consistent terminology, taxon-independent and free of homology assumptions. This terminology is intended to form a basis for new morphological descriptions. A total of 47 terms are defined. Each entry consists of a definition, discouraged terms, and a background/comment section. CONCLUSIONS: The use of our revised neuroanatomical terminology in any new descriptions of the anatomy of invertebrate nervous systems will improve the comparability of this organ system and its substructures between the various taxa, and finally even lead to better and more robust homology hypotheses.
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · DOI
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · DOI
A key problem in understanding deuterostome evolution has been the origin of the chordate body plan. A biphasic life cycle with a sessile adult and a free-swimming larva is traditionally considered ancestral in chordates with subsequent neotenic loss of the sessile adult stage. Molecular phylogenies challenged this view, suggesting that the primitive life cycle in chordates was entirely free-living as in modern day larvaceans. Here, we report the precise cell lineage and fate map in the normal embryo of the larvacean Oikopleura dioica, using 4D microscopy technique and transmission electron microscopy. We document the extraordinary rapidity of cleavage and morphogenetic events until hatching and demonstrate that--compared with ascidians--fate restriction occurs considerably earlier in O. dioica and that clonal organization of the cell lineage is more tightly coupled to tissue fate. We show that epidermal cells in the trunk migrate through 90 degrees, reminiscent of events in ascidian metamorphosis and that the axis of bilateral symmetry in the tail rotates in relation to the trunk. We argue that part of the tail muscle cells are ectomesodermal, because they are more closely associated with prospective epidermis than with other tissues in the cell lineage. Cladistic comparison with other deuterostomes suggests that these traits are derived within tunicates strengthening the hypothesis that the last common ancestor of tunicates had a sessile adult and thus support traditional morphology-derived scenarios. Our results allow hypothesizing that molecular developmental mechanisms known from ascidian models are restricted to fewer, yet identifiable, cells in O. dioica.