Scientists discover new lifeform inside human bodies

Just as scientists are exploring the surface of planets in the search for life, we’re learning staggering new things much closer to home about the human body.

In fact, experts have discovered that there’s an entire lifeform that we’re only just learning about which lives inside humans.

New research has found virus-like genetic materials, called Obelisks, hitherto unnoticed by the scientific community.

According to the authors of new research, including Stanford University biologist Ivan Zheludev, the makeup of the material doesn’t bear similarities with any other biological agents, which has led them to believe that Obelisks could provide a link between simple genetic molecules and viruses.

The research was uploaded to bioRxiv. Writing in the paper, the authors said: "Obelisks comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human, and global microbiomes.”

The fact they’ve gone undetected for so long could be due to their tiny size. Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters in total, which even on a microscopic scale is pretty small.

The study analysed 5.4 million datasets of genetic sequences and one set of research in the study also found that Obelisks turned up in half of the patients’ oral samples. The authors also suggest that Obelisks could be present in different parts of the human body.

"[This] supports the notion that Obelisks might include colonists of said human microbiomes," it reads.

It just shows that experts are uncovering things about the makeup of human bodies all the time, and it comes not long after scientists discovered a strange recurring mathematical pattern within our body’s cells.

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