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“Voice is generated by a complex and beautiful biological system, and this is a system that allows all of us to communicate messages, concepts, and emotions.”

“声音是由负责、美丽的器官系统产生的，该系统可以让我们交流信息、想法和情感。”

Nathan Welham, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. But a person can lose his or her voice because of severe damage to the vocal¹ cords, also called the vocal fold mucosa.

Nathan Welham，来自于威斯康辛大学医学与公共卫生学院。但是，声带受损，既声襞粘膜受损，也可导致人失声。

“In these situations, where the vocal fold mucosa is severely² damaged or missing and with present technology unfixable, the best option may be to simply replace it.”

“失声时，声带粘膜受到严重损害或者缺失，但是现代技术不能修复受损的声带，最好的方法就是替换受损的声带。”

Welham spoke³ at a telephone press conference on November 17th in conjunction with the announcement that he and colleagues had succeeded in generating bioengineered vocal fold mucosa that were capable of producing sound—a first step toward implants⁴ one day. Their study is in the journal Science.

在11月17日举行的电话新闻发布会上，Welham表示，自己与同事们已经成功研发了能够发声的生物工程声襞粘膜——迈出了未来植入声襞粘膜的第一步。此研究成果发表在《科学》杂志上。

The research team started with vocal cord tissue from a cadaver⁵ and from four patients who had their voice boxes removed. They took cells from those tissue samples and successfully grew them on a three-dimensional scaffold to produce new vocal cords.

研究团队从声带组织开始进行研究。这些声带组织来自尸体以及四名将自己喉头切除的病患。研究人员从这些组织样本中采取细胞，并成功在三维支架中培养这些细胞，培育出了新的声带。

So how do the lab-grown vocal cords actually sound?

但是这些实验室的声带是如何发声的呢?

“We did some functional⁶ testing where a larynx is mounted on a lab bench, put on a fake windpipe, and hot warm humidified air just like in the body is blown through and sets the vocal folds into vibration⁷, but they vibrate and generate sound just into the atmosphere.

“对此，我们做了一些功能性测试，将喉头安装在实验室平台上，并安装一个假气管，在气管内充入温暖湿润的空气，就像体内的气体流过，使声带振动，但是，振动和产生的声音只能释放到空气中”

And so the sound is quite different than what is coming out of my mouth at present…without the vocal track, sounds a little bit like a kazoo, kind of robotic sounding like Eeeeee…but that's how it should sound in this context.”

所以声音和我们现在嘴里发出的声音十分不同，没有气管作为媒介，发出的声音听起来就像卡祖笛，一种就像Eeee这样的机械发声，但是这正是它在当前这种条件下应该发出的声音。

Should bioengineered vocal cords someday be implanted into a human patient, the sound would be far different, due to the other structures present. More natural. More like what you’ve just been listening to.

生物工程声带未来是否会移植到病患体内呢，那时产生的声音应该是十分不同的，因为会有其他结构存在。声音可能会更自然呢!听起来更像你现在正倾听的声音！