首页> 外文期刊>The economist >Redesigning life
【24h】

Redesigning life

机译:重新设计生活

获取原文
获取原文并翻译 | 示例
           

摘要

For the past four billion years or so the only way for life on Earth to produce a sequence of dna-a gene-was by copying a sequence it already had to hand. Sometimes the gene would be damaged or scrambled, the copying imperfect or undertaken repeatedly. From that raw material arose the glories of natural selection. But beneath it all, gene begat gene. That is no longer true. Now genes can be written from scratch and edited repeatedly, like text in a word processor. The ability to engineer living things which this provides represents a fundamental change in the way humans interact with the planet's life. It permits the manufacture of all manner of things which used to be hard, even impossible, to make: pharmaceuticals, fuels, fabrics, foods and fragrances can all be built molecule by molecule. What cells do and what they can become is engineerable, too. Immune cells can be told to follow doctors' orders; stem cells better coaxed to turn into new tissues; fertilised eggs programmed to grow into creatures quite unlike their parents.
机译:在过去的大约40亿年中,地球上生命产生dna-a基因序列的唯一途径是复制它已经存在的序列。有时基因会被破坏或混乱,复制不完善或反复进行。从这种原料中产生了自然选择的荣耀。但在这一切之下,基因产生了基因。这不再是真的。现在,基因可以从头开始编写并重复编辑,就像文字处理程序中的文本一样。对生物提供工程改造的能力代表了人类与地球生命互动方式的根本变化。它允许制造过去很难甚至不可能制造的各种形式的东西:药品,燃料,织物,食品和香料都可以一个分子一个分子地构建。细胞的作用以及它们可以变成什么也是可工程的。可以告诉免疫细胞遵循医生的命令。干细胞更好地被诱使变成新组织;受精卵被编程成长为与父母不同的生物。

著录项

  • 来源
    《The economist》 |2019年第9137期|11-11|共1页
  • 作者

  • 作者单位
  • 收录信息
  • 原文格式 PDF
  • 正文语种 eng
  • 中图分类
  • 关键词

相似文献

  • 外文文献
  • 中文文献
  • 专利
获取原文

客服邮箱:kefu@zhangqiaokeyan.com

京公网安备:11010802029741号 ICP备案号:京ICP备15016152号-6 六维联合信息科技 (北京) 有限公司©版权所有
  • 客服微信

  • 服务号