They seem to enjoy hanging out inside bacteria, however we are not sure what they do.
Despite the fact that we have a sufficient grasp of the human body due to the fact that we have invented aspirin and read the genome, researchers continue to discover new facts about the lowly homo sapiens on a regular basis. Is this an example? Recent research has led to the discovery of a previously unidentified organism that is found in the human mouth and digestive tract. These structures that resemble viruses are being referred to as “obelisks” by the researchers because of the presumed tiny morphology of these things.
Viruses are similar to these things in that they replicate, but they are more smaller and simpler. The fact that they are so little places them in the “viroid” category, which is comprised of RNA molecules that are normally single-stranded and do not have a protein shell. On the other hand, the majority of viroids are infectious agents that cause sickness, and it does not appear that this is the case with these little obelisks, as reported by Live Science.
Then, why are they located within us, and what are their functions? It is the most important question. Some hypotheses have been proposed by the researchers who made the discoveries at Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and the Technical University of Valencia. In spite of the fact that they are also found in the mouth, they have the potential to alter gene activity inside the human microbiome. In order to accomplish this, it has been discovered that they use the common mouth-based bacterium Streptococcus sanguinis as a host environment. Despite the fact that we do not know the reason behind it, it has been hypothesized that these viroids infect a variety of bacteria in both the mouth and the stomach.
According to the findings of Science, some of the obelisks appear to include instructions for enzymes that are necessary for reproduction. As a result, they appear to be more complicated than the typical replicating viroid. In any case, the question of whether viruses originated from viroids or if viroids truly evolved from viruses has been the subject of a “chicken and the egg” discussion for many years. Therefore, additional research may ultimately put an end to this debate.
The prevalence of these obelisk sequences in human bodies has been identified by scientists, despite the fact that we do not fully understand what these sequences are responsible for. Approximately seven percent of the bacteria that live in the human intestine and a staggering fifty percent of the bacteria that live in the mouth include these sequences. A different RNA sequence is also present in the structures that are situated in the stomach, in contrast to the obelisks that are based in the mouth. Researchers have stated that they “comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human and global microbiomes” as a result of the diversity that they possess.
In an interview with Science, computational biologist Simon Roux of the DOE Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory stated, “I think this is one more clear indication that we are still exploring the frontiers of this viral universe.”
Mark Peifer, a cell and developmental scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, chimed in and said, “It’s insane.” It has been said that the more we gaze, the more bizarre things we see.
In addition, scientists have recently developed specialized bacteria that can detect cancer cells and biometric implants that may detect organ rejection following replacement surgery. Both of these developments are examples of frontier medicine. It is possible that the human body is equally as huge and enigmatic as the ocean or even space, but we are slowly (ever so slowly) unraveling the mysteries that it contains.