 OIST scientist Annie Masunaga is rearing tiny titans, a plankton called oikoplura. But why? Because they have a lot to teach us about biology in many animals. They're a very good model organism because their development is very fast. It's only five days, 23 degrees Celsius, and they go from egg to adults. Also they are transparent throughout their lives, so it's really easy to image them. This is the 3D image produced by a micro CT scan. It's basically like performing an x-ray on the plankton, and you can see all the detailed structures on the outside, and you can also see the internal structures really well as well. Knowing the oik's structure can only tell us so much. To really understand them, you have to take a peek into their genes. In our lab, we are especially interested in genetic diversity of oikoplura diioica. Their genome size is approximately 40 times smaller than that of humans, but they have about half the number of genes that we do, which makes their genome very compact. The high genetic diversity means that oik's can quickly develop into separate tribes. We recently discovered that the populations from Osaka and Okinawa cannot be crossed. Even though they are both collected from Japan and they're morphologically very similar to each other, they cannot mate. Quite why these groups have occurred isn't fully understood, but labs like these give us the tools to find out. Because oikoplura diioica has its unique characteristics in terms of their genetics and development, and how easily they can be cultured in the lab, I think this animal can teach us many interesting biological facts that we haven't answered yet. So in the future, the next big scientific breakthrough might come from a microscopic plankton living in an automated farm hidden behind this unassuming door. Watch this space.