万物简史 第581期:生命的物质(7)（在线收听）

Working with a kind of chemical clerk called a ribosome, RNA translates information from a cell's DNA into terms proteins can understand and act upon.

在一种核糖体的化学物质的帮助下，RNA将细胞里的DNA信息以蛋白质所能理解的形式翻译出来并以此作为蛋白质行动的指令。

However, by the early 1900s, where we resume our story, we were still a very long way from understanding that, or indeed almost anything else to do with the confused business of heredity.

然而，在20世纪初，我们重新开始我们的故事的时候，我们还要走好长的一段路，才能理解这一点以及与遗传扑朔迷离的现象相关的几乎任何事情。

Clearly there was a need for some inspired and clever experimentation, and happily the age produced a young person with the diligence and aptitude to undertake it. His name was Thomas Hunt Morgan, and in 1904, just four years after the timely rediscovery of Mendel's experiments with pea plants and still almost a decade before gene would even become a word, he began to do remarkably dedicated things with chromosomes.

很明显，有必要进行某种极富灵感的绝妙实验。幸运的是，这时出现了一位足以承担此任的勤勉而又才华横溢的年轻人。他的名字叫托马斯·亨特·摩尔根。1904年，也就是人们及时重新发现盂德尔的豌豆实验仅仅4年之后，他开始致力于染色体的研究，而这时距基因这个词的第一次出现，还要等上近10年的时间。

Chromosomes had been discovered by chance in 1888 and were so called because they readily absorbed dye and thus were easy to see under the microscope. By the turn of the twentieth century it was strongly suspected that they were involved in the passing on of traits, but no one knew how, or even really whether, they did this.

染色体于1888年被偶然发现，之所以这样命名，是因为它们很容易被染上颜色，因此在显微镜下很容易看到。到了世纪之交的时候，人们明显感觉到它们在传递某些特性中起到了一定作用，但是没有人知道它们是怎样起作用的，甚至有人对它们是否真正起作用也表示怀疑。

Morgan chose as his subject of study a tiny, delicate fly formally called Drosophila melanogaster, but more commonly known as the fruit fly (or vinegar fly, banana fly, or garbage fly). Drosophila is familiar to most of us as that frail, colorless insect that seems to have a compulsive urge to drown in our drinks.

摩尔根选择了一种被称为黑腹果蝇的小昆虫作为实验对象。这种昆虫通常被称为果蝇（或醋蝇、香蕉蝇、垃圾蝇）。这种果蝇纤弱，无色，在日常生活中很常见，似乎总是频频地迫不及待地一头撞进我们的饮料中。