8 ms·
'Obelisks': New class of life has been found in human digestive system
- asymmetric 2y agoThe study hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, so the title is a bit too confident in its claim.
- robertlagrant 2y agoMaybe Obelisks need an asterisk until peer review?
- fecal_henge 2y agoSplendido.
- lifeisstillgood 2y agoWe should not be so dogmatix in requiring scientific protocol - maybe there are some VitalStatistix we are not yet aware of.
- readthenotes1 2y agoIn case others don't get it: https://asterix.com/en/portfolio/obelix/ https://asterix.com/en/portfolio/obelix/
- moralestapia 2y agoHere's the journal publication (which came later during the year): https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01091-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01091-2 It truly is a new class of genomic elements.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoAnd it's been replicated?
- moralestapia 2y agoIt's using data from the Integrative Human Microbiome Project [1], so, in a sense, hundreds of high-quality biological replicas support their findings. Obelisks were found in a substantial portion of them. They then expanded the search to millions of sequences, which are publicly available, and found ~30k different classes(!) of Obelisk elements. One could argue that the quality of each of these "experiments" may not be as good as IHMP, but still, the signal is more than sufficient to clearly demonstrate the existence and implied significance of these elements. 1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31142853/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31142853/
- kelseyfrog 2y ago[flagged]
- ababaian 2y agoWhat's your definition of replication?
- kelseyfrog 2y agoThe standard that people hold soft sciences to when they dismiss them. I'm starting to realize that this may be a justification of their prejudice against these fields rather than a legitimate basis for dismissal.
- JoelMcCracken 2y agoSo basically this study is “we looked at various publicly available data sets of information, and here is a thing we notice that has previously gone unnoticed”. The noticed it in multiple datasets. What would replication look like here besides someone else looking at the dataset and agreeing that they also see the curiosities? Or do you mean someone measuring a new fresh set of data and looking at it? Asking for replication in this case is surprising, because seemingly the entire value is to prompt other research to go figure out what’s going on with these things.
- tokai 2y agoPeer review doesn't do what you think it does.
- martin82 2y agoco-author (top comment?) just said that it is peer reviewed now. Not that it matters at all.
- dr_dshiv 2y agoRemnant of RNA world?
- ababaian 2y agoAren't we all?
- dbcooper 2y agoArticle is from January. Has the study now been published in a journal?
- magicalhippo 2y agoYes, the bioRxiv entry[1] links to Cell[2]. [1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.20.576352v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.20.576352v1 [2]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.09.033 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.09.033
- Thoreandan 2y agoFrom one of the paper's authors elsewhere in this thread: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01091-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01091-2
- andybak 2y ago> researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects. I was confused at first. This isn't "Class" in the technical sense (i.e. the level between Phylum and Order)
- ababaian 2y agoCool :) I'm a co-author on this. AMA. This is now a peer-reviewed paper, published last month in Cell [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)01091-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)01091-2]. Obelisks are part of a larger research program we're developing at the University of Toronto + collaborators, see also: Virus-Viroid Hybrids paper [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38301-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38301-2] and the Zeta-Elements [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04332-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04332-2]. Computational biology is driving a revolutionary expansion of our understanding of Earth's biodiversity. I believe Zeta-elements, Ambiviruses, and Obelisks are just the beginning. If you're interested, our "Laboratory for RNA-Based Lifeforms" (University of Toronto) is hiring passionate developers/post-docs/graduate students [https://www.rnalab.ca https://www.rnalab.ca]. Edit: OK going to call it for now. I'll check in later today if there's any outstanding questions.
- Traubenfuchs 2y agoHow do obelisks fit in with commonly known forms of life? We all understand cells/bacteria and their interaction with viruses: Viruses infect cells and make them into virus factories… What do obelisks do? Are they integrated / read by DNA machinery/organells into cells that then produce more obelisks? What‘s their life cycle? How are they different from alread known viroids?
- ababaian 2y agoLargely we don't know. That's what makes them cool. This opens up a fairly large debate about where you draw the boundary of "life", "organisms", and "entities". It's a fun debate to have over a few beers since there is no objective correct answer. My view is that Obelisks are more like Viruses or Viroids, or some kind of mobile genetic element. The key detail is that they appear to be strictly RNA elements (they don't have a DNA counterpart). So they're most likely using host RNA transcription machinery to make more copies of themselves, this is what viroids and satellite viruses like "Hepatitis Delta Virus" do. What do they do? Well that's the right question. My guess is the kinds of things that bacteriophages do, Obelisks do too. Exploit cells to make more copies of themselves as selfish replicators.
- casenmgreen 2y agoPrivacy policy / cookie dialogue on that page is class A scum-worthy dark pattern.
- jeroen 2y agoI'm more surprised when I encounter one that isn't hostile like this.
- casenmgreen 2y agoThis is a staggering and amazing finding.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoBut how are these life? Life generally defined by ability to reproduce and these would be piggybacking on hosts cellular machinery. Do these have a known utility or is it possible some junk DNA is involved with their encoding?
- joe_the_user 2y agoMy crude understanding is the definition of life has gotten quite fuzzy in current biological theory. Notably, I think the "viruses first" theory for the origin life has gained force. This says that first came protein/DNA soup, then came viruses and only then came cellular organisms. And if you want something that doesn't "piggyback", you'd have to wait for photosynthesizing plants and that's several steps further in evolution (in my layman's understanding of current theory).
- treprinum 2y agoI am really glad we are finding new pieces of the puzzle of how our gut works and perhaps can someday understand their effect on immunity, neuro-degeneration, cancer etc. for which we now only have accidental findings.
- readyplayernull 2y ago> Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters So they have a higher chance of being re-created by random chemical processes at mostly any point in time and place in the universe. Omniterrestrial?
- tglobs 2y agoWhy call these obelisks their own class instead of categorizing them as another type of virus?
- husamia 2y agoit's interesting that RNA modifications are more diverse than DNA and we are just starting to develop ways to discover them. Nanopore sequencing technology from Oxford Nanopore Technology is the first technology that can sequence native RNA and their modifications. Have you explored this area?