SSS 2008-12-16
时间：2018-12-24 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(十二)月
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.
Sarah Palin on the campaign trail was at times dismissive of science. She attacked fruit fly research, saying that tax dollars were going to “projects having little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”
Well, as the mother of a special needs baby, maybe Palin should check out a report in the current issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience. University of Alberta researcher Francois Bolduc keeps 300,000 fruit flies in a basement laboratory. He discovered that disrupting one gene 1 known as FMR1 in the flies’ brains can wipe out their long-term memory. What’s interesting for us is that damage to that gene in people is associated with learning and memory problems, epilepsy and autism. That constellation 2 of traits is known as fragile X syndrome 3. Bolduc then worked on curing his forgetful flies—he found a class of drugs that reduces the activity of the FMR1 gene. And the insects were able to regain 4 their memory. Which could point to treatments for fragile X syndrome in humans. Thanks to fruit fly research in Alberta, Canada. I kid you not.
Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber.
Announcer: For more on McCain-Palin science slipups, listen to the December 17th episode of the weekly SciAm podcast, Science Talk, and check out the Anti Gravity column in the January issue of Scientific American magazine, also available at SciAm.com/sciencemag
- A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
- The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。
- A constellation is a pattern of stars as seen from the earth. 一个星座只是从地球上看到的某些恒星的一种样子。
- The Big Dipper is not by itself a constellation. 北斗七星本身不是一个星座。