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.
  • Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run
    151·
    11 months ago

    ‘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.