2021年经济学人 人猴杂交(1)

Experimental biology

实验生物学

Fantastic beasts and how to make them

神兽以及如何创造神兽

Researchers have created embryos¹ from a mix of monkey cells and human ones

研究人员创造出了半人半猴的胚胎

The ancient greeks were good at inventing fantastical animals. The chimera², for instance, was "a thing of immortal³ make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle". It was eventually slain⁴ by Bellerophon, with help from his flying horse.

古希腊人擅长想象神奇动物。比如，客迈拉是“一种不朽的创造物，非人类，狮头，蛇尾，羊身”。柏勒洛丰在他的飞马的助力下，最终将其杀死。

Not all chimeras⁵ are mythological⁶. To biologists, the term describes organisms whose bodies consist of cells from two distinct lineages. In twin pregnancies⁷, for example, one twin can occasionally absorb the other. The resulting individual is built from cells with separate genomes. A 2019 forensic-science conference discussed the case of a man who had received a bone-marrow⁸ transplant. Since bone marrow produces blood cells, subsequent DNA⁹ tests on the man's blood matched his donor's genome, not his own. (More unexpectedly, the donor's DNA also turned out to be present in swabs taken from the man's cheeks, and in his semen.)

并非所有客迈拉都是神化虚构。在生物学家口中，这个词意指那些身体由来自两个不同谱系的细胞组成的生物。例如，在双胎妊娠中，一个胎儿偶尔会把另一个“吸收”掉，最后出生的个体是由具有不同基因组的细胞组成的。2019年，一次法医科学会议讨论了一名男性接受骨髓移植的案例。由于骨髓产生血细胞，后续对这名男子的血液DNA检测显示它匹配的是供体的基因组，而不是他自身的基因组。（更出人意料的是，在他的口腔拭子和精液中也发现了供体的DNA。）

For several decades scientists have been experimenting with cross-species chimeras, organisms which, as in the Greek myths, are composites of different animals. They have created mouse-rats, sheep-goats and chicken-quails. Now, in a paper published in Cell, Tao Tan, a biologist at Kunming University of Science and Technology, and a team of American, Chinese and Spanish researchers, report efforts to extend the principle to humans. They have managed to create embryos that are part-monkey and part-human.

几十年来，科学家一直在试验创造跨物种嵌合体——和希腊神话中的神兽一样，它是不同动物的复合体。他们创造了小鼠-大鼠、绵羊-山羊以及鸡-鹌鹑嵌合体。现在，昆明理工大学的生物学家谭韬和一个由美国、中国和西班牙的研究人员组成的团队在《细胞》期刊上发表的研究尝试将这种原理扩展到人类。他们成功地创造出了部分猴子、部分人类的胚胎。

The work builds on earlier endeavours by many of the same researchers. In 2017 Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a biologist at the Salk Institute in San Diego, announced the creation of chimeric¹⁰ humanpig embryos. But quite how successful those efforts were is uncertain. Only about one cell in 100,000 in the embryos were human, and it was unclear whether they contributed to the organism's growth. This time things are different. The human cells seem happy to co-operate, at least some of the time, with the monkey ones.

这项研究建基于许多团队成员此前的探索之上。2017年，圣地亚哥的索尔克研究所的生物学家胡安卡洛斯伊兹皮苏亚贝尔蒙特宣布创造出了人-猪嵌合胚胎。但这些研究到底有多成功仍不确定。这些胚胎中每十万个细胞里大约有一个人类细胞，而且也不清楚它们是否对生物体的生长有贡献。这次情况有所不同。至少在某些时候，人类细胞似乎乐于和猴子细胞合作。

1 embryos   

n.晶胚；胚，胚胎( embryo的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Somatic cells of angiosperms enter a regenerative phase and behave like embryos. 被子植物体细胞进入一个生殖阶段，而且其行为象胚。 来自辞典例句
• Evolution can explain why human embryos look like gilled fishes. 进化论能够解释为什么人类的胚胎看起来象除去了内脏的鱼一样。 来自辞典例句

2 chimera   

n.神话怪物；梦幻

参考例句：

• Religious unity remained as much a chimera as ever.宗教统一仍然和从前一样，不过是个妄想。
• I am fighting against my chimera.我在与狂想抗争。

3 immortal   

adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的

参考例句：

• The wild cocoa tree is effectively immortal.野生可可树实际上是不会死的。
• The heroes of the people are immortal!人民英雄永垂不朽！

4 slain   

杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词)

参考例句：

• The soldiers slain in the battle were burried that night. 在那天夜晚埋葬了在战斗中牺牲了的战士。
• His boy was dead, slain by the hand of the false Amulius. 他的儿子被奸诈的阿缪利乌斯杀死了。

5 chimeras   

n.（由几种动物的各部分构成的）假想的怪兽( chimera的名词复数 )；不可能实现的想法；幻想；妄想

参考例句：

• He was more interested in states of mind than in "puerile superstitions, Gothic castles, and chimeras." 他乐于描写心情，而不愿意描写“无聊的迷信，尖拱式的堡垒和妖魔鬼怪。” 来自辞典例句
• Dong Zhong's series, in its embryonic stage, had no blossoms, birds or surreal chimeras. 董重的这个系列的早年雏形并没有梅花、鸟和超现实的连体。 来自互联网

6 mythological   

adj.神话的

参考例句：

• He is remembered for his historical and mythological works. 他以其带有历史感和神话色彩的作品而著称。
• But even so, the cumulative process had for most Americans a deep, almost mythological significance. 不过即使如此，移民渐增的过程，对于大部分美国人，还是意味深长的，几乎有不可思议的影响。

7 pregnancies   

怀孕，妊娠( pregnancy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Since the wartime population needed replenishment, pregnancies were a good sign. 最后一桩倒不失为好现象，战时人口正该补充。
• She's had three pregnancies in four years. 她在四年中怀孕叁次。

8 marrow   

n.骨髓；精华；活力

参考例句：

• It was so cold that he felt frozen to the marrow. 天气太冷了，他感到寒冷刺骨。
• He was tired to the marrow of his bones.他真是累得筋疲力尽了。

9 DNA   

(缩)deoxyribonucleic acid 脱氧核糖核酸

参考例句：

• DNA is stored in the nucleus of a cell.脱氧核糖核酸储存于细胞的细胞核里。
• Gene mutations are alterations in the DNA code.基因突变是指DNA密码的改变。

10 chimeric   

adj.妄想的，荒诞不经的

参考例句：

• High-intensity-type chimeric hedging may be gas-tight syringe safety connections, never loose. 高强度嵌合式套头，可与针筒安全气密式连接，绝不松脱。 来自互联网
• His utopia is not as chimeric commonwealth but a practical improvement on what already exists. 他的乌托邦不是空想的联邦，而是对那些已经存在的联邦实际改进。 来自互联网