So infectious diseases, right?
说到传染病
Infectious diseases are still the main cause of human suffering and death around the world.
传染病仍然是全球人类生病和死亡的主因
Every year, millions of people die of diseases such as T.B., malaria, HIV, around the world and even in the United States.
每年 全球数以万计的人们死于肺结核、疟疾、以及艾滋病 甚至是在美国
Every year, thousands of Americans die of seasonal flu.
每年都有成千上万的人因季节性流感致命
Now of course, humans, we are creative. Right?
当然作为人类 我们很有创造性 对吗？
We have come up with ways to protect ourselves against these diseases.
我们想出很多帮助我们抵抗那些疾病的方法
We have drugs and vaccines.
我们有药物和疫苗

And we're conscious -- we learn from our experiences and come up with creative solutions.
我们十分谨慎地总结经验得出新的解决办法
We used to think we're alone in this, but now we know we're not.
我们以为只有人类才懂医学 但其实不是的
We're not the only medical doctors.
我们不只是唯一的医生
Now we know that there's a lot of animals out there that can do it too.
现在我们知道有大量的动物也能做出同样的事来
Most famous, perhaps, chimpanzees.
最典型的是大猩猩
Not so much different from us, they can use plants to treat their intestinal parasites.
和人类差不多它们会利用植物清理肠道寄生虫
But the last few decades have shown us that other animals can do it too: elephants, porcupines, sheep, goats, you name it.
几十年的研究发现很多动物都会保护自己大象、豪猪、绵羊、山羊……数不胜数
And even more interesting than that is that recent discoveries are telling us
更有趣的是 最近的研究发现
that insects and other little animals with smaller brains can use medication too.
昆虫和其他小型生物也懂得医疗
The problem with infectious diseases, as we all know, is that pathogens continue to evolve,
我们都知道传染病的病原体不断演化
and a lot of the drugs that we have developed are losing their efficacy.
我们过去开发的一些药物正在逐渐失效
And therefore, there is this great need to find new ways to discover drugs that we can use against our diseases.
因此我们更需要不断开发新药物来应对不断变化的病原体
Now, I think that we should look at these animals, and we can learn from them how to treat our own diseases.
现在我认为我们应该研究一下这些动物 我们能从它们身上学习如何治愈疾病的方法
As a biologist, I have been studying monarch butterflies for the last 10 years.
作为一名生物学家 我研究帝王蝶已经10年了
Now, monarchs are extremely famous for their spectacular migrations from the U.S. and Canada down to Mexico every year,
帝王蝶以它们壮观的迁徙而闻名每年成百万的帝王蝶
where millions of them come together, but it's not why I started studying them.
从美国和加拿大一起迁徙到墨西哥但这并非我研究它们的原因
I study monarchs because they get sick.
我研究它们是因为它们会生病
They get sick like you. They get sick like me.
它们像人类一样也会生病
And I think what they do can tell us a lot about drugs that we can develop for humans.
我认为它们所做的可以让我们了解许多药物并开发出适用于人类的药物
Now, the parasites that monarchs get infected with are called ophryocystis elektroscirrha -- a mouthful.
帝王蝶身上的寄生虫叫做ophryocystis elektroscirrha 很拗口
But they do is they produce spores, millions of spores on the outside of the butterfly
这些寄生虫在蝶身上产生了成百万的孢子
that are shown as little specks in between the scales of the butterfly.
可以从蝴蝶外侧鳞片的夹缝中看见这些细小的斑点
And this is really detrimental to the monarch.
这绝对威胁着帝王斑蝶的健康
It shortens their lifespan, it reduces their ability to fly, it can even kill them before they're even adults.
缩短了它们的寿命影响它们的飞行能力甚至导致它们还没成年就死亡
Very detrimental parasite.
非常有致命性的寄生虫
As part of my job, I spend a lot of time in the greenhouse growing plants,
我的研究任务的工作之一 就是在温室里种植植物
and the reason for this is that monarchs are extremely picky eaters.
这是因为帝王蝶十分挑食！
They only eat milkweed as larvae.
它们只吃乳草的幼草
Luckily, there are several species of milkweed that they can use, and all these milkweeds have cardenolides in them.
幸好我找到了几种它们食用的含有卡烯內酯的乳草
These are chemicals that are toxic.
卡烯內酯一种具有毒性的化学物质
They're toxic to most animals, but not to monarchs.
大多数动物都无法抵抗卡烯内酯的毒素 帝王蝶除外
In fact, monarchs can take up the chemicals,
事实上 帝王蝶能够吸收这种化学物质
put it in their own bodies, and it makes them toxic against their predators, such as birds.
然后储存在自己体内 这种毒素还能用来对抗它们的天敌 比如鸟类
And what they do, then, is advertise this toxicity through their beautiful warning colorations with this orange, black and white.
它们要做的就是通过黑白相间点缀有橙色的靓丽颜色作为毒素警告吓唬它们
So what I did during my job is grow plants in the greenhouse, different ones, different milkweeds.
所以我的工作就是在温室中培养这些不同种类的植物 不同种类的乳草
Some were toxic, including the tropical milkweed,with very high concentrations of these cardenolides.
某些毒性很高 像是热带乳草这些強心甾里有大量的浓聚物
And some were not toxic. And then I fed them to monarchs.
某些却没有毒素 然后在我喂食帝王斑蝶时
Some of the monarchs were healthy. They had no disease.
某些斑蝶没有染病 很健康
But some of the monarchs were sick, and what I found is that some of these milkweeds are medicinal,
某些斑蝶则生病了 于是我发现某些乳草有药效
meaning they reduce the disease symptoms in the monarch butterflies,
意味着乳草能有效减低帝王斑蝶的症状
meaning these monarchs can live longer when they are infected when feeding on these medicinal plants.
意味着当它们注射这种物质或者食用这种有医疗价值的植物的时侯 就可以延长自己的寿命
And when I found this, I had this idea, and a lot of people said it was a crazy idea,
于是当我发现了这些 我产生了一个想法 许多人说这是一个疯狂的想法
but I thought, what if monarchs can use this right?
但是我想 是否帝王蝶能将它们的功能很好地发挥出来呢
What if they can use these plants as their own form of medicine?
如果他们能用这些植物作为他们自己的药物会怎么样呢
What if they can act as medical doctors?
如果他们能像医生一样给自己开药会怎样呢
So my team and I started doing experiments.
于是我和我的团队开始实验
In the first types of experiments, we had caterpillars, and gave them a choice: medicinal milkweed versus non-medicinal milkweed.
在第一类实验里 我们选择一些幼虫 提供两种乳草供它们选择：有药性的乳草和没有药性的乳草
And then we measured how much they ate of each species over their lifetime.
然后测量它们一生中 每种乳草吃了多少
And the result, as so often in science, was boring:
就像大部分的科学研究结果一样答案很无聊：
Fifty percent of their food was medicinal. Fifty percent was not.
有药性和没有药性的各半
These caterpillars didn't do anything for their own welfare.
这些幼虫没有为自己做出有利的选择
So then we moved on to adult butterflies,
于是我们转为研究成蝶
and we started asking the question whether it's the mothers that can medicate their offspring.
我们开始给自己问问题这些母蝶是否会医治自己的幼虫？
Can the mothers lay their eggs on medicinal milkweed that will make their future offspring less sick?
它们会把卵产在有药的乳草上吗？这会减少幼虫生病的机率吗？
We have done these experiments now over several years, and always get the same results.
我们重复这个实验很多年得到一样的结果
What we do is we put a monarch in a big cage,
我们把帝王蝶放进大笼子里
a medicinal plant on one side, a non-medicinal plant on the other side,
一边的乳草是有药性的 一边没有
and then we measure the number of eggs that the monarchs lay on each plant.
然后测量它们在两种乳草上的产卵数
And what we find when we do that is always the same.
获得的结果是一致的
What we find is that the monarchs strongly prefer the medicinal milkweed.
我们发现帝王斑蝶偏好药性乳草
In other words, what these females are doing is they're laying 68 percent of their eggs in the medicinal milkweed.
换句话说 68％ 的雌蝶会把卵产在有药性乳草上
Intriguingly, what they do is they actually transmit the parasites when they're laying the eggs.
有趣的是 在它们产卵的时候也传播了寄生虫
They cannot prevent this. They can also not medicate themselves.
它们无法阻止这些 它们也不能治疗自己
But what these experiments tell us is that these monarchs, these mothers, can lay their eggs on medicinal milkweed
但这个实验告诉我们 帝王蝶中 雌蝶会把卵产在有药性的乳草上
that will make their future offspring less sick.
这会减轻幼虫的病况
Now, this is a really important discovery, I think,
所以 我认我这是个很重要的发现
not just because it tells us something cool about nature,
不只是因为它显示了大自然的奥妙
but also because it may tell us something more about how we should find drugs.
更提醒我们应该如何开发药物
Now, these are animals that are very small and we tend to think of them as very simple.
这些动物都很小我们曾经觉得它们构造简单
They have tiny little brains, yet they can do this very sophisticated medication.
它们的大脑很小 但它们却懂得如此复杂的药物机理
Now, we know that even today, most of our drugs derive from natural products, including plants,
现在我们知道甚至到现在我们大多数的药物都来源于大自然的馈赠 例如植物
and in indigenous cultures, traditional healers often look at animals to find new drugs.
在原始社会中 医生还经常通过观察动物来发现新药物
In this way, elephants have told us how to treat stomach upset,
就像大象教我们如何治疗肠胃不适
and porcupines have told people how to treat bloody diarrhea.
刺猬教我们如何处理血便
What I think is important, though, is to move beyond
我觉得最重要的是
these large-brained mammals and give these guys more credit,
除了那些大脑发达的哺乳类动物外
these simple animals, these insects that we tend to think of as very, very simple with tiny little brains.
我们也应该更加注重这些简单的动物 昆虫 这些拥有微小脑袋的极其简单的动物
The discovery that these animals can also use medication opens up completely new avenues,
这些动物同样能够使用药物机理这一发现给我们的研究带来了新的篇章
and I think that maybe one day, we will be treating human diseases with drugs that were first discovered by butterflies,
所以我想 也许有一天 我们在治疗人类疾病的时候会用这些从蝴蝶身上发现的药物
and I think that is an amazing opportunity worth pursuing. Thank you so much.
我想这个机会是值得把握的 谢谢各位