'Obelisks' is the name given to tiny fragments of RNAsmaller than a virus, considered by its discoverers as potential 'new forms of life' and with characteristics that have surprised experts.
The discovery published in the journal 'Nature' with the name “Wildly weird' RNA bits discovered infesting the microbes in our guts” or “'Hugely strange' RNA fragments discovered that infest microbes in our guts” for its Spanish translation, was made by a team of Stanford scientists.
It was the cellular and developmental biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Mark Peifer, in his interview for Science, titled “It's insane': New virus-like entities found in human gut microbes”, who explained why this news is so surprising even to the scientific community.
“The more we look, the more crazy we see,” he said, while computational biologist Simon Roux of the DOE Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory added: “I think this (work) is a clearer indication that we are still exploring the borders of this viral universe.
Why were they called obelisks?
The obelisks They were named after their rod-shaped structures.are carriers of genetic information, capable of transmitting crucial instructions to cells, although the content of their message remains an unsolved enigma.
Professor Ed Feil, an expert in microbial evolution at the University of Bath, describes the obelisks as “circular pieces of genetic material containing one or two genesself-organizing into an intriguing rod shape.”
This finding raises significant questions about the role of these entities in the complexity of the viral universe.
This tiny biological enigma is found in the bacteria that live in the human mouth and intestine, carrying with them genomes composed of RNA loops and previously unknown sequences that have been detected in various parts of the world.
What is your influence?
The influence of obelisks on human health remains in the shadows, although there is possibility of modifying the genetic activity of their bacterial hostswhich could have unexplored implications for human genes.
RNA, a ribonucleic acid essential for life, plays a leading role in the evolutionary history of more than 200 viruses, including those known to cause influenza and COVID-19.
However, the even smaller obelisks raise a new level of questions in the world of microscopic biology.
The search for undiscovered genomes led to an astonishing find: nearly 30,000 predicted RNA circles, each representing a unique obelisk.
These enigmatic sequences were found in 7% of human gut bacteria and half of oral bacteria, highlighting the diversity of this unique class of RNA that has gone unnoticed in the human and global microbiomes.
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