'Obelisks': Entirely New Class of Life Has Been Found in The Human Digestive System
'Obelisks': Entirely New Class of Life Has Been Found in The Human Digestive System
Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects.
'Obelisks' are similar to viroids, the smallest infectious agents. Smaller even that viruses, or depending on one's definition the smallest viruses/ virii if you will. And therefore are not a class of living creatures. I'm not sure why Nature chose this headline.
Here's the cited paper in BioRxiv: Viroid-like colonists of human microbiomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.20.576352v1
Previously, I had learned about viroids, as the smallest infectious agents, primarily in plants. However there is one known in humans, Hepatitis D, a viroid that uses Hepatitis B to be able to reproduce, as it would otherwise be incapable. Here's a link to TWIV 979: Flushing out the viroids (https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-979/). Fascinating.
“This study has yet to be peer reviewed” fwiw