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中国高翻团队倾力之作
全文字数：1607字
阅读时间：15分钟
上期翻译答案
And in India, which is the region’s biggest grain supplier and provides hundreds of millions of its own citizens with food rations, the reduced wheat harvesthas resurfacedlongstanding concerns about food security and curbed the government’s ambitions to feed the world.
印度是该地区最大的粮食供应国，为本国数亿国民提供粮食配给，小麦减产再次引发了人们长期以来对粮食安全的担忧，并抑制了该国政府为世界供粮的雄心。
1.ration: a fixed amount of food given to a soldier or member of a group
2.resurface: to appear again after being lost or missing
《本期内容》
双语阅读
Enzymesproduced by gut bacteria in larvae of thebeetleZophobas morio can digest polystyrene. The enzymes could be adapted to degrade plastic in recycling plants. A previous study had found that another type of beetle larvae can eat and digest the expanded polystyrene
used in packaging thanks to the action of Serratia fonticola bacteria in their guts.
大麦虫甲虫的幼虫肠道细菌产生的酶可以消化聚苯乙烯。这种酶可以用于回收厂的塑料降解。之前的一项研究发现，由于另一种甲虫幼虫肠道里存在沙雷氏菌，它们可以吃下并消化包装袋中使用的膨胀聚苯乙烯。
Now, researchers have identified polystyrene-degrading bacterial species in the guts of Z. morio larvae – which are known as “superworms” because of their size.“We are the first ones to use a high-resolution method [to identify] potential polystyrene-degrading enzymes in the microbes of the superworm guts. We could also identify the bacteriallineagesthat possess these polystyrene-degrading capabilities,” says Christian Rinke at the University of Queensland, Australia.
现在，研究人员在大麦虫甲虫幼虫的肠道中发现了可以降解聚苯乙烯的细菌菌种，这种幼虫因其体型而被称之为“超级蠕虫”。“我们是首个使用高分辨率方法来识别超级蠕虫肠道微生物中存在潜在可降解聚苯乙烯的酶的团队。我们还可以识别出具有这些降解聚苯乙烯能力的细菌谱系，”澳大利亚昆士兰大学的克里斯蒂安·林克说。
They found that these microbes produced a class of enzymes called hydrolases
that use water to degrade the plastic polymer intostyrene monomers, which are then broken down inside bacterial cells. The team divided 171 superworms into three groups that were each fed either wheat bran, polystyrene or no food at all for three weeks. The researchers found that the worms began to chew their way into blocks of polystyrene within a day.
翻译划线句，长按文末小程序码打卡，答案下期公布~研究小组将171只超级蠕虫分成三组，在三周的时间内，一组喂麦麸、一组喂聚苯乙烯，另一组不喂任何食物。研究人员发现，蠕虫不到一天的时间就开始咀嚼聚苯乙烯块了。
“A possible way to work with the superworms is to provide food waste or agricultural bioproducts with the polystyrene. This could be a way to improve the health of the worms and to deal with the large amount of food waste in Western countries,” says Rinke. But the researchers are more interested in creating a superworm-free system that takes inspiration from the insects.
“利用超级蠕虫的一种可能的方法是给它们提供含有聚苯乙烯的食物残渣或农业生物制品。这可能是一种改善蠕虫健康和
处理西方国家大量食物浪费的方法，”林克说。但研究人员更感兴趣的是创造一个从昆虫身上获取灵感的不含超级蠕虫的运作系统。
“We will focus on creating a system thatmimicsthe mechanical degradation of plastic by the superworm, followed by further degradation by bacterial enzymes… intometabolitesthat can then be used by other microbes to produce chemical compounds of higher value, such as the bioplastic polyhydroxyalkanoate,” says Rinke.
林克说：“我们将着眼于制造一个模仿超级蠕虫机械降解塑料的系统，然后由细菌酶进一步降解……变成可由其他微生物利用的代谢物，产生价值更大的化合物，例如生物塑料聚羟基烷酸酯。”
本文节选自：New Scientist （新科学家）
发布时间：2022.06.09
作者：Carissa Wong
词汇积累
1.enzyme
音标/nza?m/
n. 酶
2.beetle
音标/?bi?t?l/
n. 甲虫
v. 匆匆地走; (人的眉毛)突出，悬垂; 用大槌捶
3. lineage
音标/?l?nd?/
n. 血统，世系
4.mimic
音标/?m?m?k/
n. 善于模仿的人; 会模拟的动物(或植物)
v. 模仿(人的言行举止); 模拟(外观或效果); 模拟(另一种植物或动物); 模拟(另一物质)的生理作用
adj. 模拟的，演习的
5.metabolite
音标/mt?bla?t/
n.代谢物
词组搭配
1.styrene monomer 苯乙烯
写作句总结
A possible way to work with the superworms is to provide
food waste or agricultural bioproducts with the polystyrene.
结构: A possible way to work with the … is to ….
利用…的一种可能的方法是…
例句: A possible way to work with the water heater is to trap energy from the sun.
打卡作业
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