英国新闻听力 山羊竟然吃轮胎（在线收听）

Now a story I can vouch for from personal experience.

下面讲一个我亲身经历过的事情。

It's about goats and that they can eat just about anything.

说的是山羊，还有山羊什么都能吃。

I used to own one many years ago when I lived in Sudan.

我很多年前在苏丹的时候养过一只，

We bought it to keep the grass short on our little lawn.

我们买它是为了把小草坪上的草弄短一点。

But it preferred eating oily rags and bicycle tires if it could get to them.

但山羊更喜欢吃油布和自行车轮胎，能找着就吃。

This digestive ability of goats may have practical applications.

山羊的这种消化能力可能会有实际用途。

In a study published in the German Science, researchers say fungi in goats' stomaches produce enzymes that can break down all sorts of things.

在德国《科学》杂志发表的一篇论文中，研究人员称山羊胃里的真菌产生的酶可分解各种物质。

What exactly can we learn from goats?

我们从山羊身上究竟可以学到什么呢？

Goats have been engineered by nature to break down really tough plant waste and agricultural waste into sugars for the animal.

山羊天生能够将难以咀嚼的植物性废弃物和农业废弃物分解为可供动物吸收的糖。

And what we wanna do is to understand how they are doing that and then translate that ability to microorganism so that we can revolutionize bioprocessing of plant waste and food scraps.

我们想做的就是搞清楚整个过程，然后把这种能力转化为微生物学，从而为植物性废弃物和餐饮垃圾的生物处理带来革命性变革。

Am I right at thinking goats are the best at this or are other herbivores equally capable?

山羊是最擅长这个的，我这样理解对吗？还是说其他食草动物都有同样的能力？

That's a great question.

这个问题问得好。

So other herbivores are great at this because they have another compartment in their digestive tracts

其他食草动物也很擅长，因为它们的消化道中有我们不具备的一个腔体，叫瘤胃，

that we don't have called the rumen which is sort of like a little bioreactor to break up tough woody things into sugar.

有点像一个小的生物反应器，它能将不易咀嚼的硬东西分解为糖。

And so it may be that the goats are particularly great at this but we would expect that all animals that have that sort of part of their stomach could actually be just as good.

所以可能山羊尤其擅长这个，但我们认为胃里有类似部分的动物也同样擅长。

These types of tough woody materials that have a lot of different polymers in them.

这些不易咀嚼的硬物质含有许多不同的聚合物，

And these polymers all put together can be broken down into sugar.

这些聚合物可以一起被分解为糖。

And so what we wanna do is to unlock the potential of these really tough to degree polymers through the action of enzymes.

而我们想做的就是通过酶的作用，开发这些坚韧到一定程度的聚合物的潜能。

And these are just power houses at breaking up that plant scrap into sugar which then you could convert to other things which might include fuels or chemicals or commodity products.

这些就是动力室，将植物碎片分解为糖，然后转化为其他东西，可以是燃料，化学品或商品产品等。

Ok. So now and how far down the road are you? Can you…?

好。那么现在你们进行到哪一步了？你们能……？

If I give you, I don't know, if I give you a rotten cauliflower, could you turn it into sugar?

如果我给你，比方说，我给你一个枯萎的菜花，你能把它转化为糖吗？

So part of what we could do is to feed that rotten cauliflower or corn stover or grasses growing in the great plants of the US to anaerobic microorganism.

我们可以做到的一点就是把那个枯萎的菜花或玉米秸或美国大型植物里长得草喂给厌氧微生物。