The article makes it sound as though this is something only humans have. Which s... | Hacker News

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		ninalanyon on Feb 2, 2025 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: 'Obelisks', a new class of life living inside huma... The article makes it sound as though this is something only humans have. Which struck me as very odd. But the paper in Cell says: "• Found globally in diverse niches, obelisks also occur in human stool and oral microbiomes" https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01091-2 Much more reasonable.

adrian_b on Feb 2, 2025 | [–]

Free preprint:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.20.576352v1

ahazred8ta on Feb 2, 2025 | [–]

They resemble a single stranded circular RNA plasmid, stuck together into a hairpin shape. Plant viroids are 250-450 bases long, while obelisks seem to be in the 1000-1200 range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_RNA -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_D

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