美国国家公共电台 NPR Mighty Mice In Space May Help Disabled People On Earth : Shot

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Now the story of some very unusual mice. They are back on Earth after a month on the International Space Station. And what scientists are learning from these animals could eventually help astronauts and other people with disabling bone and muscle diseases.

NPR's Jon Hamilton has the story of two researchers, a married couple, who sent their science into space.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE¹: At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a SpaceX rocket is about to launch. And among the crowd of onlookers² are two very anxious scientists.

SE-JIN LEE: Getting close to the two-minute warning.

HAMILTON: Dr. Se-Jin Lee studies muscles. His wife, Dr. Emily Germain-Lee, studies bones.

EMILY GERMAIN-LEE: I feel like our heart and soul is going up in that thing, you know? I'm, like, so nervous.

HAMILTON: Both scientists have a huge stake in an experiment packed inside the spacecraft.

LEE: We're past 32.

GERMAIN-LEE: All right.

HAMILTON: The experiment involves 40 mice that will spend more than a month in near-zero gravity. Usually, that causes bones to weaken and muscles to melt away.

GERMAIN-LEE: Here we go.

HAMILTON: But Emily and Se-Jin are hoping that won't happen with these mice, assuming they make it into space.

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Five, four, three, two, one.

GERMAIN-LEE: Oh. Oh. Oh, my God. Oh.

HAMILTON: It took the scientists 20 years to get the mice from lab to launchpad, but their story really begins in the late 1970s.

GERMAIN-LEE: We met when I was 18, and we were bio-chem majors in college together.

HAMILTON: At Harvard. They clicked. And early on, Emily had big dreams about what she and Se-Jin might accomplish.

GERMAIN-LEE: Wouldn't that be amazing if one day we worked on some project together that had incredible meaning and helped people and, like, all the stuff that you'd think a teenage kid would say.

HAMILTON: The couple went to medical school together at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She specialized³ in kids with rare bone disorders⁴. He focused on muscle growth. They got married, had a son. And in the late 1990s, Se-Jin Lee got kind of famous. The reason was a bulked-up rodent⁵ known as Mighty⁶ Mouse. He showed me an example when I visited his lab in 2006.

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LEE: This was one that I've actually engineered. It has about four times the muscle mass of normal mice.

HAMILTON: Ordinarily, myostatin limits the growth of muscles. Get rid of that protein, and you get the mouse version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

LEE: If you open up the mouse and actually look at the muscles, it is just really unbelievable, right? These animals are almost getting to the point where they don't really look like mice.

HAMILTON: Se-Jin thought his discovery might help people with diseases that weakened muscles. So he began looking for a drug that could block myostatin. Meanwhile, Emily was treating children with diseases that affected⁷ their bones, and she noticed that weak bones could lead to weak muscles.

GERMAIN-LEE: My bone patients don't escape muscle loss because they have large periods of time where they can't move or a whole lifetime where they're wheelchair-bound.

HAMILTON: Emily says it also works the other way.

GERMAIN-LEE: Any muscle disease leads to weakness. And any weakness leads to bone fragility eventually.

HAMILTON: At home, Emily and Se-Jin talked a lot about muscle and bone. And they realized a drug that could strengthen both might help a lot of people - kids with muscular dystrophy or brittle⁸ bone disease, cancer patients, patients with hip⁹ fractures and older people who had simply grown frail¹⁰.

Eventually, Se-Jin identified a potential drug. It's a substance that affects not only myostatin, but also other proteins involved in bone growth. Emily wanted to test the drug on mice with brittle bones.

GERMAIN-LEE: I said, oh, my gosh, I really have to try this. And Se-Jin said, sure. And those were the first set of experiments we actually physically¹¹ did together.

HAMILTON: The experiments worked. The mice developed stronger bones and stronger muscles. And Se-Jin saw a chance to revive an idea he'd been pursuing for two decades. It involved astronauts.

LEE: So for the astronauts in space, you know, they have lots of health things that they need to be thinking about, but certainly at the very top of that list would be muscle loss and bone loss.

HAMILTON: Without gravity, a person can lose up to 20% of their muscle mass in less than two weeks. By this time, Se-Jin and Emily had moved to the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Emily works at Connecticut Children's Medical Center. Se-Jin has an appointment at the Jackson Laboratory. And not long after he arrived, Se-Jin got a chance to send his mighty mice to the International Space Station. They went up in December and came back last week.

LEE: Question is, will they lose any of that muscle mass? And then, if they do lose, then will they lose at the same rate as normal mice? Will they end up at the same place as normal mice? Will they be somewhat protected and so forth¹²?

HAMILTON: But Se-Jin and Emily also sent up some other mice. They're normal rodents¹³ that received the drug that builds both muscle and bone, at least on Earth. It will take months for Se-Jin and Emily to know for sure whether they've figured out how to maintain muscles without gravity, but the couple says preliminary results look promising¹⁴. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 onlookers   

n.旁观者，观看者( onlooker的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A crowd of onlookers gathered at the scene of the crash. 在撞车地点聚集了一大群围观者。
• The onlookers stood at a respectful distance. 旁观者站在一定的距离之外，以示尊敬。

3 specialized   

adj.专门的，专业化的

参考例句：

• There are many specialized agencies in the United Nations.联合国有许多专门机构。
• These tools are very specialized.这些是专用工具。

4 disorders   

n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调

参考例句：

• Reports of anorexia and other eating disorders are on the increase. 据报告，厌食症和其他饮食方面的功能紊乱发生率正在不断增长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The announcement led to violent civil disorders. 这项宣布引起剧烈的骚乱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 rodent   

n.啮齿动物；adj.啮齿目的

参考例句：

• When there is a full moon,this nocturnal rodent is careful to stay in its burrow.月圆之夜，这种夜间活动的啮齿类动物会小心地呆在地洞里不出来。
• This small rodent can scoop out a long,narrow tunnel in a very short time.这种小啮齿动物能在很短的时间里挖出一条又长又窄的地道来。

6 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

7 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

8 brittle   

adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的

参考例句：

• The pond was covered in a brittle layer of ice.池塘覆盖了一层易碎的冰。
• She gave a brittle laugh.她冷淡地笑了笑。

9 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

10 frail   

adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的

参考例句：

• Mrs. Warner is already 96 and too frail to live by herself.华纳太太已经九十六岁了，身体虚弱，不便独居。
• She lay in bed looking particularly frail.她躺在床上，看上去特别虚弱。

11 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

12 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

13 rodents   

n.啮齿目动物( rodent的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Rodents carry diseases and are generally regarded as pests. 啮齿目动物传播疾病，常被当作害虫对待。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Some wild rodents in Africa also harbor the virus. 在非洲，有些野生啮齿动物也是储毒者。 来自辞典例句

14 promising   

adj.有希望的，有前途的

参考例句：

• The results of the experiments are very promising.实验的结果充满了希望。
• We're trying to bring along one or two promising young swimmers.我们正设法培养出一两名有前途的年轻游泳选手。