科技。

　　Artificial meat.

　　人造肉。

　　Hamburger junction.

　　人造汉堡的诞生。

　　Muscle grown in factories could soon be appearing in a supermarket near you.

　　工厂培养的肉可能很快出现在你周围的超市了。

　　A QUARTER of a million euros is rather a lot to pay for a hamburger, but that will be the cost of the patty which Mark Post proposes to stick in a bun this October. The burger in question-not so much a quarter-pounder as a quarter-million-pounder-will be so expensive because it will be made from meat that has been grown from scratch in a laboratory.

　　25万欧元去买一个汉堡包确实是相当贵，但这只是今年十月Mark Post计划内夹在面包片中一块肉饼的价格。那关于这个汉堡——就不仅仅是一个0.25磅重的汉堡了，相当于250000磅汉堡的价格——这么贵是因为它所用的肉是从实验室里培养出来的。

　　Dr Post, who works at Eindhoven University in the Netherlands, belongs to a group of people who hope to disrupt one of mankind's oldest industries-animal husbandry. In fact, they wish not so much to disrupt it as to destroy it.

　　Post博士任职于荷兰霍芬大学，现从属于一个课题组，该课题组致力于中止人类最古老的行业之一——畜牧业。实际上，他们不仅仅希望去中止它而是去终结该产业。

　　Raising animals is a resource-intensive process. About 30% of the world's ice-free land is used for it. Yet of the nutrients in the plants these animals eat, only around 15% is turned into meat. As the human population grows, and grows richer, demand for meat is increasing. Dr Post hopes to satisfy at least part of that demand by making the stuff in factories, in a way that converts about 50% of the nutrients into something people can eat.

　　饲养动物就是一个资源富集的过程。世界上大约30%的非冰覆陆地都在进行此过程。而动物吃掉植物后，只能把其中15%的营养变成肉。当人口不断增长时，对肉类需求也在增加。Post博士希望通过把50%的营养转换成可食用肉的方法，使工厂生产的肉至少能满足人们的部分需求。

　　For now, that something is not exactly fillet steak. Dr Post's cultures, grown from stem cells, are sheets 3cm long, 1.5cm wide and half a millimetre deep. To make the world's most expensive hamburger 3,000 of them will be needed.

　　现在那些东西未必是正宗的菲力牛排了。Post博士的做法是，把干细胞培养于3厘米长，1.5厘米宽，0.5毫米深的基槽内。所以需要3000个培养基才能做成这个世界最贵的汉堡包。

　　The stem cells themselves are extracted from cattle muscle and then multiplied a millionfold before they are put in Petri dishes and allowed to turn into muscle cells. When they have done so, they are encouraged to exercise and build up their strength by being given their own gym equipment (pieces of Velcro to which they can anchor themselves in order to stretch and relax spontaneously). The fatty cells of adipose tissue, needed for juiciness, are grown separately and then combined with the muscle cells before the whole thing is cooked. In theory, one cow could thus supply as many hamburgers as a million slaughtered animals can today.

　　那些干细胞从牛肌肉中提取，在放入培养皿和变成肌细胞之前，干细胞还要经过上百万次繁殖。完成这个阶段后，它们还要经过锻炼来增加自己的强度，也就是为它们提供一些“健身器材”（为了能让它们自发地伸展和放松，需把它们固定在维可牢上）。那些脂肪组织的脂肪细胞需要具有多汁性，则要进行单独培养，在整个被烹调之前，还要把它和肌肉组织结合在一起。理论上，以这种方式一头牛能提供的汉堡量比得上当今屠宰一百万头牛的产量。

　　Producing meat in Petri dishes is not commercially viable, but Dr Post hopes to scale things up-first by growing the cells on small spheres floating in tanks and ultimately by using scaffolds made of biodegradable polymer tubes, which would both add the third dimension needed for a juicy steak and provide a way of delivering nutrients and oxygen to the steak's interior.

　　在培养皿中生产肉不具有商业可行性，但Post博士希望把规模成倍扩大——首先把细胞培养在大容里面的球形漂浮物上，最后再使用可降解聚合物试管做支承，这样既能增加多汁牛肉所需的视觉真实感，还能提供传递营养和氧气到牛肉内部的通路。

　　The nutrients themselves could come from conventional crops, but Dr Post also has plans to use algae, which grow faster than vascular plants, to provide the necessary amino acids, sugars and fats. The upshot would be a world with fewer stock animals. Not only would that liberate land, it would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions (cattle are notorious sources of methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide). Moreover, you do not even have to kill a cow to obtain stem cells from it. A biopsy will do. That might mean that vegetarians would be able to enjoy meat, too.

　　那些营养物质可以从普通农作物中获取，但Post博士计划使用藻类，因为它们比那些维管植物长的要快，以此提供所需的氨基酸、糖类和脂肪。这样最终结果将是世界再也不必饲养那么多动物，不仅可以解放土地，还可以减少温室气体的排放（牛是臭名昭著的甲烷释放源，且甲烷是比二氧化碳更严重的温室气体）。此外，你也不必再为获得干细胞而杀掉一头牛——活体切片法便可做到。这意味着素食主义者也可以享用肉类了。