万物简史 第418期:生命的起源(12)

 　　We are all the result of a single genetic¹ trick handed down from generation to generation nearly four billion years, 我们都是同一遗传戏法的结果。那种戏法一代一代地传下来，经历了差不多40亿年，

　　to such an extent that you can take a fragment of human genetic instruction,  到了最后，你甚至可以学上一点人类遗传的知识，

　　patch it into a faulty yeast² cell, and the yeast cell will put it to work as if it were its own. 拼凑个错误百出的酵母细胞，真酵母细胞还会让它投入工作，仿佛它是自己的同类。

　　In a very real sense, it is its own. 在非常真实的意义上，它确实是它的同类。

　　The dawn of life—or something very like it, 生命的黎明——或者说是很像生命的东西，

　　sits on a shelf in the office of a friendly isotope³ geochemist named Victoria Bennett in the Earth Sciences building of the Australian National University in Canberra. 摆在一位友好的同位素地球化学家办公室的书架上。她的名字叫维多利亚·贝内特。她的办公室位于堪培拉澳大利亚国立大学的地球科学系大楼。

　　An American, Ms. Bennett came to the ANU from California on a two-year contract in 1989 and has been there ever since. 贝内特女士是美国人，根据一个为斯两年的合同于1989年从加利福尼亚来到澳大利亚国立大学，此后一直留在那里。

　　When I visited her, in late 2001, she handed me a modestly hefty hunk of rock composed of thin alternating stripes of white quartz⁴ and a gray-green material called clinopyroxene. 2001年底我去拜访她的时候，她递给我一块不起眼的又重又大的石头。它由带细条纹的白色石英和一种灰绿色的名叫斜辉石的材料组成。

　　The rock came from Akilia Island in Greenland, where unusually ancient rocks were found in 1997. 石头来自格陵兰的阿基利亚岛。1997年，那个岛上发现了极其古老的岩石。

　　The rocks are 3.85 billion years old and represent the oldest marine⁵ sediments⁶ ever found. 那些岩石的年代已达38.5亿年之久，代表了迄今为止发现过的最古老的海洋沉积物。

　　We can't be certain that what you are holding once contained living organisms because you'd have to pulverize⁷ it to find out, Bennett told me. “我们没有把握，你手里拿着的玩意儿里边去是不是存在微生物。你非得将它敲碎了才能搞明白。”贝内特对我说，

　　"But it comes from the same deposit where the oldest life was excavated⁸, so it probably had life in it" “但是，它来自过去掘过最古老的生命的同一矿床，因此它里面很可能有过生命。”

　　Nor would you find actual fossilized microbes, however carefully you searched. 无论你怎么仔细搜寻，你也找不到真正的微生物化石。

1 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

2 yeast   

n.酵母；酵母片；泡沫；v.发酵；起泡沫

参考例句：

• Yeast can be used in making beer and bread.酵母可用于酿啤酒和发面包。
• The yeast began to work.酵母开始发酵。

3 isotope   

n.同位素

参考例句：

• The isotope ratio is directly used for comparing oils or gases.同位素比率直接用于比较各种石油或天然气。
• How to apply a radio isotope?如何运用放射性同位素？

4 quartz   

n.石英

参考例句：

• There is a great deal quartz in those mountains.那些山里蕴藏着大量石英。
• The quartz watch keeps good time.石英表走时准。

5 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

6 sediments   

沉淀物( sediment的名词复数 )； 沉积物

参考例句：

• When deposited, 70-80% of the volume of muddy sediments may be water. 泥质沉积物沉积后，体积的70-80％是水。
• Oligocene erosion had truncated the sediments draped over the dome. 覆盖于穹丘上的沉积岩为渐新世侵蚀所截削。

7 pulverize   

v.研磨成粉；摧毁

参考例句：

• A factory making armaments had been bombed the night before and a residential area not far away had been pulverized.前天晚上，一家兵工厂被炸，不远处的居民区也被夷为平地。
• He is set to pulverise his two opponents in the race for the presidency.他决心在总统竞选中彻底击垮他的两个对手。

8 excavated   

v.挖掘( excavate的过去式和过去分词 )；开凿；挖出；发掘

参考例句：

• The site has been excavated by archaeologists. 这个遗址已被考古学家发掘出来。
• The archaeologists excavated an ancient fortress. 考古学家们发掘出一个古堡。 来自《简明英汉词典》