(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Malaria infection begins when a mosquito injects the Plasmodium parasite into the blood.
But getting sick is not a certain outcome.
"The vast majority of people really only develop either mild malaria or even asymptomatic infections."
Nathan Schmidt, a cellular immunologist at the University of Louisville.
"It's a very small subset of the hundreds of millions of cases that progress to severe malaria."
Some of the variation in illness severity is genetic.
Or whether the patient is partially immune, thanks to past exposures.
But Schmidt and his colleagues have found another factor that could influence the disease: the host's microbiome.
The first clue came during an experiment in lab mice:even though the mice were almost identical genetically, mice that had been bought from different vendors showed variability in their response to infection by the malaria parasite.
Turns out, the mice had different microbiomes.
So the researchers did more tests—they transplanted the gut bugs of both the resistant and the susceptible animals into other mice that had no gut bacteria.
And again, mice that now had the resistant microbial mix were spared the worst of a malaria infection—possibly through some sort of booster effect on their immune system thanks to the microbes.
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As for optimizing our microbiomes?
"I think that we're pretty far away from this having any kind of real therapeutic potential for humans."
Yogurt alone, for example, did not much help the mice.
But if and when we do find the right recipe for the anti-malarial microbiome, the researchers say, it could lessen the parasite's effects.
And perhaps save thousands of lives.
参考译文
蚊子将疟原虫注入血液后就会造成疟疾感染。
但受到这种感染的人不一定就会生病。
“绝大多数人只会感染轻度疟疾，或甚至不会出现任何症状。”
路易斯维尔大学的细胞免疫学家内森·施密特说道:
“数以百亿计病例中只有极小的几率会发展成严重疟疾。”
有一些危重度疾病的变异是遗传。
由于过去的病史，一些病人会产生出对此的免疫力。
但是施密特和他的同事们已发现另一个影响疟疾的因素，那就是宿主的微生物。
第一条线索是来自于在实验室中对老鼠进行的试验：即使老鼠的基因基本相同，但这些出自不同商贩之手的老鼠对疟原虫所引发的疾病反应也各不相同。
结果表明这些老鼠体内有着截然不同的微生物。
为此研究人员进行了更多试验—他们将具有抵抗力及易感的老鼠肠道细菌移植到了不含这种细菌的其它老鼠体内。
结果再次证明体内具有混合细菌的老鼠不会发展成最严重的疟疾—可能是免疫系统起到了作用。
这项研究已在《美国国家科学院院刊 》上发表。
那么如何让我们人类体内的微生物达到最佳化呢?
我认为现在人类距真正的治疗潜力还有很长一段路要走。
比如酸奶就对这些小老鼠没有太大帮助。
但如果我们揭开疟疾微生物的奥秘，研究人员表示就会减少寄生虫的影响。
这样可能会挽救成千上万人的性命。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
1.thanks to 幸亏，多亏，由于
例句:Scottish step-dancing survived thanks to Highland emigrants to Cape Breton, Canada, who maintained the tradition, and now step-dancing is becoming increasingly popular again in Scotland.
幸亏从高地移民到加拿大Cape Breton的人们保留了这种传统，踢踏舞得以幸存。目前，踢踏舞逐渐在苏格兰复兴起来。
2.turn out 生产;结果;产生
例句:Some of Davis's tips are banal to say the least: If you are working from home, turn off the TV stands out.
戴维斯的一些诀窍至少可以说是平淡乏味的。如果你在家中工作，关掉电视就是突出的一例。
3.even though 哪怕;即使
例句:Thomas D. Gorman: and recruiting people that have the right character traits even though they might lack the specialized knowledge.
高德思:去招募那些性格合适的人，哪怕他们缺乏专业知识。
4.in response to 回应;响应
例句:He chuckled in response to her question.
他轻轻一笑作为对她的问题的回答。
