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Science and technology
科學技術
Nanotechnology
納米技術
A fab result
生物工廠
A novel way of making computer memories, using bacteria
制造計算機存儲器的新奇方法：使用細菌
FOR half a century, the essence of progress in the computer industry has been to do more with less.
半個世紀以來，計算機產業發展的本質就是花錢更少，成事更多。
Moore's law famously observes that the number of transistors which can be crammed into a given space doubles every 18 months.
摩爾定律的著名論斷是：能夠放入某空間內的晶體管數量每18個月翻一番。
The amount of data that can be stored has grown at a similar rate.
儲存的數據也有著類似的增長速率，
Yet as components get smaller, making them gets harder and more expensive.
但是隨著部件越來越小，它們的制造難度和成本也逐漸增加。
On May 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, a big American chipmaker, put the price of a new chip factory at around $10 billion.
5月10日，美國芯片巨頭因特爾總裁兼CEOPaul Otellini宣布將花費上百億美元建設新工廠。
Happily for those that lack Intel's resources, there may be a cheaper option—namely to mimic Mother Nature,
對于不像因特爾那么有錢的廠家的好消息是，他們或許可以選擇更便宜的方式—模擬大自然。
who has been building tiny devices, in the form of living cells and their components, for billions of years, and has thus got rather good at it.
對于大自然來說，她建造微小設備已經有數十億年了，所以自然是信手拈來，當然，這些設備都是以活細胞和其組份的形式呈現。
A paper published in Small, a nanotechnology journal, sets out the latest example of the technique.
發表在納米技術期刊《微小》的一篇論文描述了這一新技術的示例，
In it, a group of researchers led by Sarah Staniland at the University of Leeds, in Britain, describe using naturally occurring proteins to make arrays of tiny magnets,
該技術團隊由英國利茲大學的Sarah Staniland領導，他們用自然生成的蛋白質讓微型磁性材料進行排列，
similar to those employed to store information in disk drives.
這與磁盤驅動器上儲存信息的磁性材料排序是類似的。
The researchers took their inspiration from Magnetospirillum magneticum, a bacterium that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field thanks to the presence within its cells of flecks of magnetite, a form of iron oxide.
研究人員從趨磁細菌上獲得了靈感，由于該細菌內部存在磁性顆粒，所以對地球磁場非常敏感。
Previous work has isolated the protein that makes these miniature compasses. Using genetic engineering, the team managed to persuade a different bacterium—Escherichia coli, a ubiquitous critter that is a workhorse of biotechnology—to manufacture this protein in bulk.
他們先要把制造這種微型羅盤的蛋白質分離出來，并采用基因工程技術設法讓另一種細菌—大腸桿菌來批量生產這種蛋白質，而大腸桿菌在生物體內普遍存在，是生物工程中的常用苦力。
Next, they imprinted a block of gold with a microscopic chessboard pattern of chemicals.
然后他們用化學方法繪制微小的棋盤圖案，
Half the squares contained anchoring points for the protein.
并把圖案的每一塊染成金黃色，
The other half were left untreated as controls.
每塊區域的一半用該蛋白質做固定點，
They then dipped the gold into a solution containing the protein, allowing it to bind to the treated squares, and dunked the whole lot into a heated solution of iron salts.
另一半不做任何處理作為對照，再把這些金黃色的棋盤浸入含蛋白質的溶液中，并允許溶液中的蛋白質與棋盤上的固定蛋白質結合，最后把該棋盤全部浸入加熱的鐵鹽溶液中。
After that, they examined the results with an electron microscope.
他們再用電子顯微鏡觀察實驗結果，
Sure enough, groups of magnetite grains had materialised on the treated squares, shepherded into place by the bacterial protein.
果然，棋盤上的固定蛋白質區域產生了成群的磁鐵顆粒，并由細菌蛋白質控制在相應位置。
In principle, each of these magnetic domains could store the one or the zero of a bit of information, according to how it was polarised.
基本上每個磁域都能按極化的方式存儲一個字節信息的1或0。
Getting from there to a real computer memory would be a long road.
但是要制成真正的計算機存儲器還有很長的路要走，
For a start, the grains of magnetite are not strong enough magnets to make a useful memory, and the size of each domain is huge by modern computing standards.
首先對于可用的存儲器來說，那些磁鐵顆粒的磁性還不夠強大，并且每個區域的尺寸對現在計算機標準來說太大了。
But Dr Staniland reckons that, with enough tweaking, both of these objections could be dealt with.
但Staniland認為，只要做些足夠的調整，那些困難都將不是問題。
The advantage of this approach is that it might not be so capital-intensive as building a fab.
這種方法的好處就是不用像因特爾那樣如此資源密集地去建造新工廠，
Growing things does not need as much kit as making them.
在制造不斷發展的產品時也不需要同樣多的設備，
If the tweaking could be done, therefore, the result might give the word biotechnology a whole new meaning.
所以，如果這種調整可以成功的話，生物技術將會有一個全新的定義。
