Detecting new entities lurking in the human body

According to research published in the journal Cellobelisks are circular pieces of genetic material that contain one or two genes and organize themselves into rod shapes, Mail reported on December 20. “It’s crazy. The more we learn, the more strange things we see,” commented Mark Peifer, a cell and developmental biologist at the University of North Carolina.

The team, led by biochemist Ivan Zheludev at Stanford University, discovered the obelisk by sifting through data from an RNA database containing thousands of gene sequences collected from the mouth, intestines and other sources. Obelisk has a genome made up of RNA rings similar to viroids – viruses that cause diseases in plants. Therefore, experts are confused when they find them in the human body.

Their genome was previously overlooked because it was so different from any life form ever found and recorded. However, new research shows that obelisks are not rare. Half of the people in the study had obelisks in their mouths and 7% had them in their intestines. Experts will need to learn more to better understand how common they are.

A team of scientists has discovered 30,000 different types of obelisks depending on the person and body part where they are found. Long-term analysis revealed a type of obelisk that can live in the human body for about a year. The team believes that these entities invade bacterial cells to replicate, similar to how viruses infect a host and then replicate inside.

Scientists are not sure whether obelisks can cause disease in humans, but one species of viroid that can do this is Hepatitis D (hepatitis D). Obelisks, viroids and viruses all rely on a host to survive. They do not eat, reproduce or mate. However, some researchers believe that viroids and their relatives, perhaps including obelisks, represent the most ancient life forms on Earth.

Currently, scientists can only speculate about the obelisk’s evolutionary and ecological role. They can be parasitic and harmful to host cells, but they can also be beneficial or completely harmless. If future studies show that the obelisk significantly affects the health or function of the human microbiome, it would be an important finding.