剑桥雅思14阅读Test3Passage2原文翻译

这篇文章主要讨论了药物发现和开发过程中对自然产物的重视及利用。作者指出了古代对自然药物的利用和现代药学科学的发展，以及近年来再次天然产物的趋势。文章还探讨了昆虫作为潜在药物来源的可能性，并讨论了在保护环境的同时开发昆虫来源药物的动机。最终，作者呼吁人们重新审视自然的价值，以期能够发现新的药物和保护生物多样性。

 

段落A

More drugs than you might think are derived from, or inspired by, compounds found in living things. Looking to nature for the soothing and curing of our ailments is nothing new – we have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You only have to look at other primates – such as the capuchin monkeys who rub themselves with toxin-oozing millipedes to deter mosquitoes, or the chimpanzees who use noxious forest plants to rid themselves of intestinal parasites – to realise that our ancient ancestors too probably had a basic grasp of medicine.

比你想象的更多的药物是来源于或受到生物体中发现的化合物的启发。寻求大自然来舒缓和治愈我们疾病的做法并不新鲜——我们已经这样做了数万年。你只需要看看其他灵长类动物——比如一些卷尾猴用分泌毒素的千足虫擦身体来驱赶蚊虫，或者用有毒的森林植物来清除肠道寄生虫的黑猩猩——就会意识到我们的古代祖先可能也对药物有基本的了解。

段落B

Pharmaceutical science and chemistry built on these ancient foundations and perfected the extraction, characterisation, modification and testing of these natural products. Then, for a while, modern pharmaceutical science moved its focus away from nature and into the laboratory, designing chemical compounds from scratch. The main cause of this shift is that although there are plenty of promising chemical compounds in nature, finding them is far from easy. Securing sufficient numbers of the organism in question, isolating and characterising the compounds of interest, and producing large quantities of these compounds are all significant hurdles.

药学科学和化学建立在这些古老基础上，并完善了对这些天然产物的提取、表征、修改和测试。然后，在一段时间里，现代药学科学把重点从自然转移到实验室，从零开始设计化学化合物。这种转变的主要原因是，尽管自然界中有许多有前途的化合物，但要找到它们并不容易。获得足够数量的相关生物体，分离和表征感兴趣的化合物，并产生大量这些化合物都是相当困难的障碍。

 

段落C

Laboratory-based drug discovery has achieved varying levels of success, something which has now prompted the development of new approaches focusing once again on natural products. With the ability to mine genomes for useful compounds, it is now evident that we have barely scratched the surface of nature’s molecular diversity. This realisation, together with several looming health crises, such as antibiotic resistance, has put bioprospecting – the search for useful compounds in nature – firmly back on the map.

实验室药物发现取得了不同程度的成功，这已经促使了再次着眼于天然产物的新方法的发展。有能力从基因组中挖掘有用的化合物，现在明显地看到我们对大自然的分子多样性几乎只是触及了表面。这一认识，再加上一些即将到来的健康危机，比如抗生素耐药性，已经将生物勘探——在自然中寻找有用的化合物——再次牢牢地放在了地图上。

段落D

Insects are the undisputed masters of the terrestrial domain, where they occupy every possible niche. Consequently, they have a bewildering array of interactions with other organisms, something which has driven the evolution of an enormous range of very interesting compounds for defensive and offensive purposes. Their remarkable diversity exceeds that of every other group of animals on the planet combined. Yet even though insects are far and away the most diverse animals in existence, their potential as sources of therapeutic compounds is yet to be realised.

昆虫是陆地领域中无可争议的主宰，在那里它们占据了每一个可能的生态位。因此，它们与其他生物的互动方式多种多样，这驱动了一系列非常有趣的化合物的进化，用于防御和攻击。它们的非凡多样性超过了地球上其他所有动物群体的总和。然而，尽管昆虫是迄今为止最多样化的动物，它们作为治疗化合物的潜在来源尚未得到实现。

段落E

From the tiny proportion of insects that have been investigated, several promising compounds have been identified. For example, alloferon, an compound produced by blow fly larvae, is used as an antiviral and antitumor agent in South Korea and Russia. The larvae of a few other insect species are being investigated for the potent antimicrobial compounds they produce. Meanwhile, a compound from the venom of the wasp Polybia paulista has potential in cancer treatment.

从已经调查过的少数昆虫中，已经发现了一些有前途的化合物。例如，由蝇蛆产生的一种名为alloferon的化合物在韩国和俄罗斯被用作抗病毒和抗肿瘤药物。其他一些昆虫物种的幼虫正在被研究，因为它们产生了强效的抗微生物化合物。同时，来自蜂毒的一种化合物在癌症治疗方面有潜力。

段落F

Why is it that insects have received relatively little attention in bioprospecting? Firstly, there are so many insects that, without some manner of targeted approach, investigating this huge variety of species is a daunting task. Secondly, insects are generally very small, and the glands inside them that secrete potentially useful compounds are smaller still. This can make it difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of the compound for subsequent testing. Thirdly, although we consider insects to be everywhere, the reality of this ubiquity is vast numbers of a few extremely common species. Many insect species are infrequently encountered and very difficult to rear in captivity, which, again, can leave us with insufficient material to work with.

为什么昆虫在生物勘探中受到的相对较少呢？首先，有如此之多的昆虫，没有一种有针对性的方法，调查这么多品种是一项艰巨的任务。其次，昆虫通常非常小，而它们体内分泌潜在有用化合物的腺体更小。这可能会使得获得足够数量的化合物进行后续测试变得困难。第三，尽管我们认为昆虫无处不在，但实际上它们无处不在的是少数非常常见的物种。许多昆虫物种很少被发现，并且很难在圈养中繁殖，这又会让我们无法得到足够的材料来研究。

段落G

My colleagues and I at Aberystwyth University in the UK have developed an approach in which we use our knowledge of ecology as a guide to target our efforts. The creatures that particularly interest us are the many insects that secrete powerful poison for subduing prey and keeping it fresh for future consumption. There are even more insects that are masters of exploiting filthy habitats, such as faeces and carcasses, where they are regularly challenged by thousands of microorganisms. These insects have many antimicrobial compounds for dealing with pathogenic bacteria and fungi, suggesting that there is certainly potential to find many compounds that can serve as or inspire new antibiotics.

我在英国阿伯里斯特威斯大学的同事和我已经开发了一种方法，我们利用我们对生态的了解作为指导，将我们的努力集中在特别感兴趣的昆虫身上，这些昆虫分泌强大的毒素来制服猎物并保持其新鲜以备将来食用。甚至有更多的昆虫是擅长利用污秽的栖息地，比如粪便和尸体，在那里它们经常受到成千上万微生物的挑战。这些昆虫具有许多抗微生物化合物来应对致病菌和真菌，这表明肯定有很多化合物可以作为新的抗生素或者提供灵感。

段落H

Although natural history knowledge points us in the right direction, it doesn’t solve the problems associated with obtaining useful compounds from insects. Fortunately, it is now possible to snip out the stretches of the insect’s DNA that carry the codes for the interesting compounds and insert them into cell lines that allow larger quantities to be produced. And although the road from isolating and characterising compounds with desirable qualities to developing a commercial product is very long and full of pitfalls, the variety of successful animal-derived pharmaceuticals on the market demonstrates there is a precedent here that is worth exploring.

尽管自然历史知识让我们朝着正确的方向前进，但它并不能解决从昆虫中获取有用化合物的问题。幸运的是，现在可以剪切出携带有趣化合物的昆虫DNA片段，并将其插入到允许产生更多数量的细胞系中。虽然从分离和表征具有理想特性的化合物到开发商业产品的道路是漫长而充满陷阱的，但市场上成功的动物来源药物的多样性证明了这里有值得探索的先例。

段落I

With every bit of wilderness that disappears, we deprive ourselves of potential medicines. As much as I’d love to help develop a groundbreaking insect-derived medicine, my main motivation for looking at insects in this way is conservation. I sincerely believe that all species, however small and seemingly insignificant, have a right to exist for their own sake. If we can shine a light on the darker recesses of nature’s medicine cabinet, exploring the useful chemistry of the most diverse animals on the planet, I believe we can make people think differently about the value of nature.

随着每一片荒野的消失，我们都剥夺了潜在的药物。尽管我很乐意帮助开发一种突破性的昆虫来源药物，但我对这种方式研究昆虫的主要动机是保护。我真诚地相信，所有物种，无论多么微小和看似无关紧要，都有权利存在。如果我们能够照亮大自然药品柜的黑暗角落，探索地球上最多样化的动物的有用化学，我相信我们可以让人们对自然的价值产生不同的看法。