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a butterfly with glowing eyes
一只眼睛發光的蝴蝶
Believe it or not, Monteiro and her team inserted a new gene into the butterfly's genetic sequence—one taken from a jellyfish.
信不信由你，蒙泰羅和他的團隊在蝴蝶的基因序列中插入了一種新基因，是來自水母的一個基因。
No, I know you're fooling.
不，我知道你在開玩笑。
Actually I'm not. This gene codes for a green florescent protein that, in nature, makes certain jellyfish luminesce. By taking just that one bit out of a jellyfish sample, essentially attaching it to some modified DNA that naturally knows how to insert itself into a gene sequence, and then injecting the self-inserting DNA with the piggybackingjellyfish gene into some butterfly eggs, the researchers were able to produce a butterfly with glowing eyes. That's already been done with other insects, but this is the first genetically modified butterfly in history.
實際上我并沒有。事實上，這種基因是一種使得某些水母發冷光的綠色熒光蛋白。通過從水母樣品中取一點這種基因出來，把它們附在一些天生就知道怎么把自己插入一個基因序列的改良過的DNA中，然后將這種帶有捎帶式水母基因的DNA注入一些蝶卵中，研究者們就可以生產出眼睛閃閃發光的蝴蝶了。這個實驗在其他昆蟲身上已經做過了，但這是史上第一只轉基因蝴蝶。
That's weird!
真奇怪！
The idea isn't to produce weird looking butterflies; the glowing protein acts as a marker. That is, when you have succeeded in inserting it into a new organism, it's very obvious that it's there. This is just the basic research that may one day allow us to modify gene sequences on a larger scale—to get rid of genetically based diseases, for example.
這一想法并不是想制造出看起來怪異的蝴蝶，而是這閃閃發光的蛋白充當著標記的角色。也就是說，當你成功的將之插入一個新的生物體后，能很明顯的看到它的存在。這僅僅是基礎研究，也許有一天能讓我們更大范圍的修改基因序列——比如，擺脫遺傳性疾病。
