美国科学60秒 SSS 2012-12-24
时间：2018-12-02 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(十二)月
英语课
Every fall, you need a new flu shot. That’s because today’s vaccines 2 train your immune system to recognize specific strains of flu, indentified by two proteins on the virus’s coat, / and /. That’s where the H and N come from in H1N1.
Problem is those proteins are moving target. They mutate quickly. Once they do, your immune system can’t recognize them, and you’ve got something like the 2009 swine flu. A strain the flu shot never primed us to fight.
To make a more universal vaccine 1 that would work year after year, researchers focused on a smaller, more stable protein, called M2. In human’s strains, the protein has hardly changed since 1930s.
Researchers engineered the M2 vaccine and gave it to mice. Then they exposed the mice to lethal 3 dose of human, swine and bird flu. All the vaccinated 4 mice survived, their unlucky counterparts did not. The research appears in journal Molecular 5 Therapy.
A good seasonal 6 flu vaccine will still beat the M2 vaccine, but if the M2 give us insurance against a surprise strain, well, it might be worth a shot.
1 vaccine
n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的
- The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
- She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。
2 vaccines
疫苗，痘苗( vaccine的名词复数 )
- His team are at the forefront of scientific research into vaccines. 他的小组处于疫苗科研的最前沿。
- The vaccines were kept cool in refrigerators. 疫苗放在冰箱中冷藏。
3 lethal
adj.致死的；毁灭性的
- A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
- She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。
4 vaccinated
[医]已接种的，种痘的，接种过疫菌的
- I was vaccinated against tetanus. 我接种了破伤风疫苗。
- Were you vaccinated against smallpox as a child? 你小时候打过天花疫苗吗？