英語聽力文摘 基因也瘋狂

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成吉思汗瘋狂的基因

Today, Afghanistan is a war-torn region, battled over by military forces and world-spanning empires. Eight hundred years ago things were much the same. Only then, there was only one ruler: Genghis Khan.

Khan is one of the greatest conquerors who ever lived. Before he was finished, he had created an empire that ran all the way from the Caspian Sea to the Sea of Japan.

That’s the history portion of our show. Now, on to the science. What is it that powerful males of the human species are after when they overrun other males? From an evolutionary point of view, the major objective is to spread their genes more effectively. And surprising, new data suggest Khan may have done that more successfully than anyone imagined.

Researcher Tatiana Zerjal, from the University of Oxford in England, and a team of geneticists took genetic samples of over twenty-one thousand men from all over Asia. They were looking for variations in certain genetic “markers,” or sequences of genes that tell you something about where people came from. To their astonishment, they found that one out of every twelve Asian men in regions once part of the Mongol empire carry a form of the Y chromosome that can be traced to Mongolia a thousand years ago. How did this genetic tag become so widespread?

Khan, they suggest. There is reason to believe that Khan himself, and thus his long-ruling descendants, had this particular form of Y chromosome. And though his power is long faded, the genetic empire of the conqueror is going strong–in roughly one out of every two hundred men alive today.

軍隊武力戰(zhàn)爭和帝國擴張疆土讓如今的阿富汗飽受戰(zhàn)亂之苦。早在800年前，阿富汗時局依舊，唯一不同的是只有一個統(tǒng)治者：成吉思汗。

成吉思汗是史上最偉大的征服者之一。成吉思汗生前征服的疆域從里海到日本海。

說完歷史故事，讓我們來說說科學(xué)吧。為什么強大的民族想要征服其它民族?從進化的角度說，其主要目的是開枝散葉。令人驚訝的是，新數(shù)據(jù)顯示成吉思汗出人意外地成功做到了這一點。

牛津大學(xué)研究人員Tatiana Zerjal和一組基因?qū)W者采集了亞洲21000份基因樣本，從中尋找某種基因“記號”或基因序列變化。基因序列可以識別出身。令人驚訝的是，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)曾是蒙古帝國疆域，每12個人中就有一人攜帶追溯到千年前的蒙古基因的Y染色體。為何這種基因“標(biāo)簽”流傳如此之廣?

研究人員猜測，有理由相信成吉思汗及長期統(tǒng)治的后裔都有這種特殊的Y染色體。雖然時至今日，成吉思汗的政權(quán)早已衰敗，但是成吉思汗的基因卻留在人們的血液中。今天，大概每200人中可能就有一人有這種基因。

Caspian Sea ：里海

Genghis Khan： 成吉思汗或Chinggis Khan，廟號元太祖，孛兒只斤氏，名鐵木真，蒙古族。世界歷史上最偉大和杰出的政治家、軍事家。1206年，被推舉為蒙古帝國的大汗，統(tǒng)一蒙古各部。在位期間多次發(fā)動對外征服戰(zhàn)爭，征服地域西達(dá)西亞、中歐的黑海海濱。