英語聽力文摘486 眼睛發(fā)光的蝴蝶

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a butterfly with glowing eyes

Believe it or not, Monteiro and her team inserted a new gene into the butterfly’s genetic sequence–one taken from a jellyfish.

No, I know you're fooling.

Actually I'm not. This gene codes for a green florescent protein that, in nature, makes certain jellyfish luminesce. By taking just that one bit out of a jellyfish sample, essentially attaching it to some modified DNA that naturally knows how to insert itself into a gene sequence, and then injecting the self-inserting DNA with the piggybackingjellyfish gene into some butterfly eggs, the researchers were able to produce a butterfly with glowing eyes. That’s already been done with other insects, but this is the first genetically modified butterfly in history.

That's weird!

The idea isn’t to produce weird looking butterflies; the glowing protein acts as a marker. That is, when you have succeeded in inserting it into a new organism, it’s very obvious that it’s there. This is just the basic research that may one day allow us to modify gene sequences on a larger scale–to get rid of genetically based diseases, for example.

信不信由你，蒙泰羅和他的團(tuán)隊(duì)在蝴蝶的基因序列中插入了一種新基因，是來自水母的一個(gè)基因。

不，我知道你在開玩笑。

實(shí)際上我并沒有。事實(shí)上，這種基因是一種使得某些水母發(fā)冷光的綠色熒光蛋白。通過從水母樣品中取一點(diǎn)這種基因出來，把它們附在一些天生就知道怎么把自己插入一個(gè)基因序列的改良過的DNA中，然后將這種帶有捎帶式水母基因的DNA注入一些蝶卵中，研究者們就可以生產(chǎn)出眼睛閃閃發(fā)光的蝴蝶了。這個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)在其他昆蟲身上已經(jīng)做過了，但這是史上第一只轉(zhuǎn)基因蝴蝶。

真奇怪!

這一想法并不是想制造出看起來怪異的蝴蝶，而是這閃閃發(fā)光的蛋白充當(dāng)著標(biāo)記的角色。也就是說，當(dāng)你成功的將之插入一個(gè)新的生物體后，能很明顯的看到它的存在。這僅僅是基礎(chǔ)研究，也許有一天能讓我們更大范圍的修改基因序列——比如，擺脫遺傳性疾病。