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But yeast cells are as nothing compared with human cells, which are not just more varied and complicated, but vastly more fascinating because of their complex interactions.
但是，與人體細胞比起來，無論其多樣性還是其復雜性，酵母細胞簡直不值一提。但是，酵母細胞有著復雜的互動性，因此更有意思。
Your cells are a country of ten thousand trillion citizens, each devoted in some intensively specific way to your overall well-being. There isn't a thing they don't do for you. They let you feel pleasure and form thoughts. They enable you to stand and stretch and caper. When you eat, they extract the nutrients, distribute the energy, and carry off the wastes—all those things you learned about in junior high school biology—but they also remember to make you hungry in the first place and reward you with a feeling of well-being afterward so that you won't forget to eat again. They keep your hair growing, your ears waxed, your brain quietly purring. They manage every corner of your being. They will jump to your defense the instant you are threatened. They will unhesitatingly die for you—billions of them do so daily. And not once in all your years have you thanked even one of them. So let us take a moment now to regard them with the wonder and appreciation they deserve.
你的細胞是一個有著l億億個公民的國度，每一個公民都以某種特有的方式全心全意地為你的整體利益服務。它們為了你什么都干，它們讓你感覺快樂，產生思想。它們使得你能夠站立、伸懶腰和蹦蹦跳跳。當你吃東西的時候，它們攝取養分，供給能量，排除廢物——干所有你在高中生物學中所了解到的事情，而且它們還不忘記先使你有一種饑餓感，并使你在就餐后產生舒適的感覺，以后就不會再忘記吃東西。它們使你的頭發生長，耳朵產生耳垢，大腦悄無聲息地運轉。它們管理你身上的每一個角落：當你受到威脅時，它們會挺身而出保護你。它們會毫不猶豫地為你而獻身——每天有多達數十億個細胞在這么做：可是終其一生你從未向它們中的任何一個表達過謝意。因此，現在就讓我們肅立片刻，向它們表示我們的敬佩與贊賞之意。
We understand a little of how cells do the things they do—how they lay down fat or manufacture insulin or engage in many of the other acts necessary to maintain a complicated entity like yourself—but only a little. You have at least 200,000 different types of protein laboring away inside you, and so far we understand what no more than about 2 percent of them do. (Others put the figure at more like 50 percent; it depends, apparently, on what you mean by "understand.")
細胞是怎樣完成它們所做的一切——它們怎樣儲存脂肪，怎樣制造胰島素，怎樣參與維持和你這樣復雜的實體所必需的其他活動，我們也許了解一點點——但僅僅是一點點。你的身體內活躍著至少20萬種不同類型的蛋白質。可走到目前為止，我們對它們的了解不超過2%。（有人將這一數字調高到50%左右。顯然，這取決于你如何界定“了解”這個詞的含義。）
