In ways that we have barely begun to understand, trillions upon trillions of reflexive chemical reactions add up to a mobile, thinking, decision-making you—or, come to that, a rather less reflective but still incredibly organized dung beetle. Every living thing, never forget, is a wonder of atomic engineering.
幾萬(wàn)億幾萬(wàn)億個(gè)反射性的化學(xué)反應(yīng)，以我們才剛剛開始知道的方式，加起來(lái)形成能行動(dòng)、有思想、有主見的你——或者形成一個(gè)不大有思想而又依然結(jié)構(gòu)有序的金龜子。千萬(wàn)不要忘記，每個(gè)生物都是一個(gè)原子工程方面的奇跡。
Indeed, some organisms that we think of as primitive enjoy a level of cellular organization that makes our own look carelessly pedestrian. Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.
有一些我們認(rèn)為是很原始的生物有著某種層面的細(xì)胞組織，使得我們自己的細(xì)胞組織看上去馬虎潦草，平淡無(wú)奇。將海綿的細(xì)胞分解開（比如通過(guò)過(guò)濾器過(guò)濾），然后把它們倒進(jìn)溶液中，它們會(huì)很快重新聚合，再次形成海綿。你可以反復(fù)做這種實(shí)驗(yàn)，它們總會(huì)頑固地重新聚合在一起。這是因?yàn)椋拖衲愫臀遥约八袆e的生物那樣，它們有一種不可抗拒的沖動(dòng)：繼續(xù)活下去。
And that's because of a curious, determined, barely understood molecule that is itself not alive and for the most part doesn't do anything at all. We call it DNA, and to begin to understand its supreme importance to science and to us we need to go back 160 years or so to Victorian England and to the moment when the naturalist Charles Darwin had what has been called "the single best idea that anyone has ever had"—and then, for reasons that take a little explaining, locked it away in a drawer for the next fifteen years.
而這一切都是因?yàn)榇嬖谝环N非常古怪、堅(jiān)定不移、我們所知甚少的分子。這種分子本身沒有生命，它們中的絕大多數(shù)根本不做任阿事情。它的名字叫DNA。在開始了解它對(duì)于科學(xué)和對(duì)于我們所具有的極端重要性之前，我們有必要先回到大約160年前維多利亞時(shí)代的英國(guó)，即博物學(xué)家查爾斯·達(dá)爾文所生活的時(shí)期。當(dāng)時(shí)，達(dá)爾文提出了一種“有史以來(lái)最好的理論”——可是在隨后的15年里卻被鎖在抽屜里。其中原因，我們得花費(fèi)一些筆墨才能解釋清楚。
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