上期答案
In cars, we first got cruise control, but now there’s brake assist, lane assist, even assisted parking — all of which build towards something driverless.
在汽车方面,我们首先有了巡航控制,但现在有了制动辅助,车道辅助,甚至辅助停车——所有这些都是为了实现无人驾驶。
本期内容
早上好,读者朋友们,今天分享的文章节选自aeon.co。在浩瀚的科学宇宙中,我们正站在一个前所未有的转折点上——后基因组生物学时代已经悄然开启。这不仅仅是一场技术的革新,更是一次对人类自我认知与生命本质的深刻重塑。在这个时代,我们不再满足于仅仅解读生命的“遗传密码”DNA,而是开始深入探索那些让生命之树繁茂生长的复杂网络、动态交互与精妙调控。这是一场关于“我们不是机器”的壮丽探险,邀请您一同踏上这场非凡的旅程。
Welcome to the new post-genomic biology
欢迎来到新的后基因组生物学
1
You could be forgiven for thinking that the turn of the millennium was a golden age for the life sciences. After the halcyon days of the 1950s and ’60s when the structure of DNA, the true nature of genes and the genetic code itself were discovered, the Human Genome Project, launched in 1990 and culminating with a preliminary announcement of the entire genome sequence in 2000, looked like – and was presented as – a comparably dramatic leap forward in our understanding of the basis of life itself. As Bill Clinton put it when the draft sequence was unveiled: ‘Today we are learning the language in which God created life.’ Portentous stuff.
genetic /dʒəˈnetɪk/ adj. 基因的
culminate /ˈkʌlmɪneɪt/ v.告终,结束
portentous /pɔːrˈtentəs/ adj.先兆的
点击下方查看翻译
你可能会认为,新千年之交是生命科学的黄金时代。在 20 世纪 50 年代和 60 年代的黄金时代,人们发现了 DNA 结构、基因的真正本质以及遗传密码本身。此后,人类基因组计划于 1990 年启动,并于 2000 年初步公布了整个基因组序列。这一计划看起来(并且被描述为)是我们对生命基础理解的一个巨大飞跃。正如比尔·克林顿在公布基因组序列草案时所说:“今天,我们正在学习上帝创造生命的语言。”这可真是个不祥之兆。
The genome sequence reveals the order in which the chemical building blocks (of which there are four distinct types) that make up our DNA are arranged along the molecule’s double-helical strands. Our genomes each have around 3 billion of these ‘letters’; reading them all is a tremendous challenge, but the Human Genome Project (HGP) transformed genome sequencing within the space of a couple of decades from a very slow and expensive procedure into something you can get done by mail order for the price of a meal for two. Since that first sequence was unveiled in 2000, hundreds of thousands of human genomes have now been decoded, giving an indication of the person-to-person variation in sequence. This information has provided a vital resource for biomedicine, enabling us, for example, to identify which parts of the genome correlate with which diseases and traits. And all that investment in gene-sequencing technology was more than justified merely by its use for studying and tracking the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
double-helical /ˈdʌbl ˈhelɪkl/ 双螺旋的
unveil /ˌʌnˈveɪl/ v.公开,揭示
点击下方查看翻译
基因组序列揭示了构成我们DNA的化学成分(有四种不同的类型)沿着分子的双螺旋链排列的顺序。我们每个人的基因组都有大约30亿个这样的“字母”;识别它们是一个巨大的挑战,但人类基因组计划(HGP)在几十年的时间里将基因组测序从一个非常缓慢和昂贵的过程转变为一种你可以通过邮购完成的事情,价格相当于两个人的一顿饭。自从2000年第一个基因序列公布以来,成千上万的人类基因组已经被解码,给出了人与人之间基因序列差异的指示。这些信息为生物医学提供了重要的资源,例如,使我们能够确定基因组的哪些部分与哪些疾病和特征相关。在COVID-19大流行期间,基因测序技术被用于研究和追踪SARS-CoV-2病毒,这就证明了对基因测序技术的所有投资都是合理的。
That task hasn’t turned out as expected. The copious genome databases haven’t yet produced the flood of new treatments and drugs that some had predicted from gene-based medicine, nor delivered on the promise of therapies tuned to our own individual genomes. Despite the COVID-19 vaccines, drug development as a whole has stagnated or even slowed over recent decades, becoming ever more costly. And most drugs are still found by old-fashioned trial and error, not by leveraging genetic data. The outcomes have been particularly disappointing for understanding and treating cancer, long thought to arise from changes (mutations) in the sequences in our DNA that are either inherited or accumulated through age and environmental wear and tear. Despite the genetic data glut, biology seems to have settled back into a long, slow slog.
copious /ˈkoʊpiəs/ adj.大量的;充裕的
stagnate /ˈstæɡneɪt/ v. 停滞,不发展
trial and error 反复实验;不断摸索
wear and tear 损耗、磨损
glut /ɡlʌt/ n.供过于求
slog /slɑːɡ/ n.艰苦工作(努力)
点击下方查看翻译
这项任务并没有像预期的那样完成。丰富的基因组数据库还没有像一些人预测的那样,产生大量新的治疗方法和药物,也没有兑现针对我们个人基因组的治疗方法的承诺。尽管有COVID-19疫苗,但近几十年来,药物开发总体上停滞不前,甚至放缓,成本越来越高。而且,大多数药物的发现仍然是通过老式的试错法,而不是利用基因数据。长期以来,人们一直认为癌症是由我们DNA序列的突变引起的,这些变化要么是遗传的,要么是由于年龄和环境的磨损而积累起来的,而对癌症的理解和治疗结果尤其令人失望。尽管基因数据供过于求,但生物学似乎又陷入了漫长而缓慢的困境。
Fixing life remains difficult – but, in terms of understanding it, the course of cell and molecular biology over the past several decades isn’t a tale of unfulfilled promise. On the contrary, we’re in one of the most exciting periods since James Watson and Francis Crick discovered DNA’s double helix in 1953. The transformative advances of the post-genomic decades are revealing nothing less than a new biology: an extraordinary and fresh picture of how life works. And ironically, those advances turn out to undermine the skewed view of life on which the HGP itself was predicated, in which the genome sequence of DNA was the ‘secret of life’.
in terms of 就……而言
undermine /ˌʌndərˈmaɪn/ v. 逐渐削弱
点击下方查看翻译
修复生命仍然很困难——但是,就理解生命而言,过去几十年的细胞和分子生物学历程并不是一个没有实现承诺的故事。相反,我们正处于自1953年詹姆斯·沃森和弗朗西斯·克里克发现DNA双螺旋结构以来最激动人心的时期之一。后基因组时代的变革进步揭示了一种新的生物学:一幅关于生命如何运作的非凡而新鲜的图景。具有讽刺意味的是,这些进步最终破坏了人类基因组计划本身所依据的扭曲的生命观,即DNA的基因组序列是“生命的秘密”。
Only around 1-2 percent of the entire human genome actually consists of protein-coding genes. The remainder was long thought to be mostly junk: meaningless sequences accumulated over the course of evolution. But at least some of that non-coding genome is now known to be involved in regulating genes: altering, activating or suppressing their transcription into RNA and translation into proteins. Many disease-linked regions are in these regulatory sequences, where mutations don’t change the proteins themselves but, rather, the rate or chance of them being made at all. So, to understand how life really works at the genomic level, we need to understand gene regulation. And that, as we’ll see, is not just eye-wateringly complicated but not at all what we have learnt to expect from the conventional molecular biology of the past 50 years.
transcription /trænˈskrɪpʃ(ə)n/ n.抄写;誊写;改编
conventional /kənˈvenʃən(ə)l/ adj.常规的,传统的
点击下方查看翻译
实际上,整个人类基因组中只有大约1- 2%是由蛋白质编码基因组成的。剩下的大部分被认为是垃圾:在进化过程中积累的无意义序列。但至少有一些非编码基因组现在被认为参与了基因调节:改变、激活或抑制它们转录成RNA并翻译成蛋白质。许多与疾病相关的区域都在这些调控序列中,突变不会改变蛋白质本身,而是改变它们产生的速度或机会。所以,为了理解生命在基因组层面上是如何运作的,我们需要理解基因调控。正如我们将看到的,这不仅是令人瞠目结舌的复杂,而且完全不是我们从过去50年的传统分子生物学中学到的。
END
写作句式积累
The best metaphors for thinking about how life works come not from our technologies but from life itself.
思考生命如何运作的最佳隐喻不是来自我们的技术,而是来自生命本身。
长难句解析
The outcomes have been particularly disappointing for understanding and treating cancer, long thought to arise from changes (mutations) in the sequences in our DNA that are either inherited or accumulated through age and environmental wear and tear.
这是一个复合句,主句是:The outcomes have been particularly disappointing. for understanding and treating cancer 是介词短语作状语,ong thought to arise from changes (mutations) in the sequences in our DNA 是过去分词短语作定语,修饰前面的整个句子内容,that are either ... or ...是定语从句,修饰先行词changes (mutations)。
翻译练习
Thus, genes may still be ‘selfish’, and organisms may still be ‘machines’, brains ‘computers’, genomes ‘blueprints’, so long as we give those metaphorical words different interpretations to the everyday ones – thereby, of course, negating their value as metaphors.
翻译练习,欢迎大家文末留言打卡,下期推送文章公布答案哟,一起阅外刊学英语吧!
英语外刊完整版PDF下载(持续更新中...)
链接:https://pan.quark.cn/s/3cc79f7e4431
点击下方链接查看往期文章 ↓ ↓ ↓记得点关注哟
扫码关注我的视频号
分享
收藏
点赞
在看
分享,收藏,点赞与在看,至少我要拥有一个吧↓↓↓