評論
打印
Science and Technology
科技版塊
Animal Research
動物研究
New model army
新模型大軍
Might lemurs be better than mice when it comes to medical research
在醫學研究方面，狐猴可能比小白鼠更好
Tree 2B, ranomafana, is not an address recognised by Madagascar's postal service.
拉努馬法納的Tree 2B，是一個不被馬達加斯加郵政部門承認的地址。
It is, though, someone's home.
不過，這是某個人的家。
The someone in question is a mouse lemur called Judah, the 349th participant to be enrolled into a project run by Mark Krasnow, a biochemist at Stanford University, in California.
是一只叫做猶大的鼠狐猴，是加州斯坦福大學生物化學家馬克·克拉斯諾主持的一個項目的第349名參與者。
Judah's involuntary membership of the project began when he found himself trapped inside a metal box.
當猶大發現自己被困在一個金屬盒子里時，他開始了對該項目的非自愿加入。
He had been lured there by a bait of banana put there by Dr Krasnow's collaborators, Haja Ravelonjanahary and Mahery Razafindrakoto of the ValBio research centre on the edge of Ranomafana National Park, 260km south of Antananarivo.
他是被克拉斯諾博士的合作者哈賈·拉維隆賈納哈里和馬赫里·拉扎芬德拉科托放在那里的香蕉誘餌引誘過去的。他們是瓦爾比奧研究中心的成員，該研究中心位于塔那利佛以南260公里的拉諾馬法納國家公園邊緣。
Judah's captivity was temporary, for he was released back into his home at 2b about six hours later.
猶大被囚禁是暫時的，因為大約六個小時后，他就會被釋放回自己的家——Tree 2B。
But in the interim he was subjected to various indignities.
但在此期間，他受到了各種各樣的“侮辱”。
He had his testes measured, a blood sample taken and he was made to do exercises to see how strong he was.
檢測了睪丸，抽取了血樣，并讓他做運動，看看他有多強壯。
He also had a tiny transponder inserted under his skin so that he could be identified next time he was caught.
還在他皮膚下植入了一個微型應答器，這樣下次被抓到時就可以辨認出他的身份。
Judah, and his 348 predecessors similarly trapped and released by biologists at ValBio, are among the first recruits to what is, on the face of it, an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking.
從表面上看，Judah和他的348位前輩都是這項雄心勃勃的事業的首批成員。
For Dr Krasnow's plan is to add mouse lemurs to the short and rather random list of so-called model organisms.
克拉斯諾博士的計劃是將鼠狐猴添加到所謂模式生物的簡短而隨機的名單中。
These are species which, for various reasons, biologists know a lot about.
由于各種原因，生物學家對這些物種了解甚多。
And, since knowledge breeds knowledge, they tend to be the ones about which further knowledge accumulates.
而且，因為知識孕育知識，所以往往會積累更多的知識。
Model organisms assist all sorts of biological research, but a lot of it is medical.
“模型生物”有助于各種生物學研究，其中很多都是醫學研究。
And here there is a problem.
這里有一個問題。
Ideally, medical research would be done on species that resemble Homo sapiens.
理想情況下，醫學研究應該在類似智人的物種上進行。
But working on human beings' closest relatives—apes and monkeys—is increasingly hard to do.
但是，研究人類的近親——猿和猴子，越來越難做到。
First, such large animals are expensive to keep.
首先，這樣的大型動物飼養成本很高。
Second, that expense means they are often unavailable in the numbers needed for statistically significant work.
其次，費用高昂意味著他們往往無法獲得統計意義重大的工作所需的數據。
Third, public opinion, at least in the West, is swinging against their use.
第三，公眾輿論，至少在西方，正在反對它們的使用。
Mice, one common alternative to primates, are cheap, abundant and less prone to stir consciences.
老鼠是靈長類動物的一種常見替代品，價格低廉，數量眾多，不太容易引起人們良知上的不安。
But they can only take you so far.
但他們也只能幫你這么多了。
Though mammals, they are not close relatives of people.
雖然是哺乳動物，但它們并不是人類的近親。
Sometimes that lack of relatedness can be finessed by inserting human genes that are relevant to the matter under investigation.
有時，通過插入與被調查物質相關的人類基因，可以巧妙地解決這種缺乏關聯性的問題。
But even then, the underlying platform is still a rodent, not a primate.
但即便如此，優先選擇仍然是嚙齒類動物，而不是靈長類動物。
By contrast, a mouse lemur, though it looks and behaves a bit like a mouse, and is not much bigger, is indeed a primate, and so is much more similar to a human being than a rodent is.
相比之下，盡管鼠狐猴的外表和行為有點像老鼠，個頭也不大，但它確實是靈長類動物，因此比嚙齒類動物更像人類。
Mice, moreover, have short lives, and thus high turnover.
此外，老鼠壽命短，因此流動率高。
But mouse lemurs can live for 14 years in captivity and maybe ten in the wild.
但是鼠狐猴在圈養環境中可以存活14年，在野外也可以活10年。
That is a nice compromise between a period brief enough to arrive at conclusions that are useful (and will result in career-enhancing research papers), and long enough to be more similar to a human being's life-history.
這是一個很好的折衷方案，既可以在足夠短的時間內得出有用的結論（并將產生促進職業發展的研究論文），又可以在足夠長的時間內更接近人類的生活史。
