In the second episode of the fifth season of the cult TV series from the 90s “X-files”, the beautiful Agent Scully meets with Dr. Vitagliano. He was asked by the FBI to grow some unclassified cellular material found in an ice core sample. To his surprise, the cells started to divide.

Agent Scully: “They began somatic development?”

Dr. Vitagliano: “The beginning of a life form. Growing into what, I don’t know.”

Scully then looked (obviously for the first time in her life) into a microscope and checked this alien life form.

You can imagine my surprise when I recognized a pluteus sea urchin. I learned later that this part of the episode was filmed in the lab of my colleague Andy Cameron in Caltech, California (he recently told me that he just received an “X-files” cap for this and did not have the chance to see Dana Scully, what a shame).

Anyway, I kind of always knew that these little creatures were alien. If you have the chance to watch them swimming, they are shaped like a little a space shuttle. So it makes complete sense to have some of these shuttles swimming in the KOSMOS.

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you may remember that we have added some sea urchin larvae to the mesocosms a few days ago. The next step was to check if our little spacecrafts survived their transfer to their new home.

In the last days, I went through the plankton samples that were collected the day after the transfer. Around 300 liters was filter and all the organisms bigger than 55 microns were conserved in paraformaldehyde.

At a first glance under the microscope, it was quite depressing (for me). I could find a lot of copepods and the algae Coscinodiscus, but no sea urchin larvae.

The algae Coscinodiscus.

Copepod.

But after a few minutes, my patience was rewarded. Sea urchins larvae were there (MY SEA URCHIN LARVAE WERE THERE!!!) and they looked great. They have the shape expected and they grew a beautiful skeleton and digestive track. In a matter of one or two days they will be ready to eat. Beware, poor phytoplankton. The eating machine is in the place.

Urchin larvae at “prism” stage.

Scientists are strange persons and can surely get excited by unusual things but this was like Christmas to me. This was the confirmation that our experiment worked.

I’ve put my super scientist mask and started to take pictures. With these, I’ll be able to measure their growth.

I am analyzing the preliminary data and the first results are very promising. Tomorrow, another sample of plankton will be collected.

So Dana (can I call you Dana, Agent Scully?), if you read this do not hesitate to stop by. I can show you more of this alien material. We can check together what happened in the last week. For sure they grew to the next stage, but “growing into what? I don’t know.”

Sam Dupont