万物简史 第418期:生命的起源(12)
英语课
We are all the result of a single genetic 1 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 yeast 2 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 isotope 3 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 quartz 4 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 marine 5 sediments 6 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 pulverize 7 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 excavated 8, 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。
adj.遗传的,遗传学的
- 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。
n.酵母;酵母片;泡沫;v.发酵;起泡沫
- 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。
n.同位素
- 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?
n.石英
- 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。
adj.海的;海生的;航海的;海事的;n.水兵
- 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。
沉淀物( sediment的名词复数 ); 沉积物
- 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。
v.研磨成粉;摧毁
- 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。
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