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Yet, like mice, mouse lemurs breed prolifically and quickly, with a gestation period of just two months and maturity achieved within six to eight months.
然而，和老鼠一樣，鼠狐猴繁殖迅速，妊娠期只有兩個月，成熟期為6到8個月。
And not just in a laboratory.
而且不僅僅是在實驗室里。
In Madagascar there are millions of them—for, contrary to common perception, not all lemur species are endangered.
馬達加斯加有數(shù)以百萬計的狐猴，與人們的認知不太一樣，并不是所有的狐猴物種都瀕臨滅絕。
What is particularly intriguing for Dr Krasnow and his colleagues, though, is that, in captivity at least, mouse lemurs suffer several illnesses which affect humans too.
然而，克拉斯諾博士和他的同事們特別感興趣的是，即使在圈養(yǎng)中，鼠狐猴也會患上幾種同樣會影響人類的疾病。
These include Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders, cardiac arrhythmias, metastatic uterine cancer, strokes and atherosclerosis, the furring of the arteries that can lead to a heart attack.
這些疾病包括阿爾茨海默癥和其他神經(jīng)退行性疾病、心律失常、轉(zhuǎn)移性子宮癌、中風(fēng)和動脈粥樣硬化等，動脈淤積還可能引發(fā)心臟類的疾病。
Model organisms tend to happen by accident.
模型生物往往是偶然產(chǎn)生的。
Yeast is used by brewers and bakers, so is an obvious topic for study.
酵母是啤酒釀造商和面包師使用的，因此是一個顯而易見的研究課題。
Fruit flies were picked by Thomas Morgan, an early geneticist, because they are easy to breed in large numbers—and it helped that some of their cells have giant chromosomes which showed up well under the microscopes of the day.
果蠅是由早期的遺傳學(xué)家托馬斯·摩根挑選的，因為它們很容易大量繁殖，而且它們的一些細胞有巨大的染色體，在顯微鏡下很容易看到。
And mice were kept as pets by fanciers long before one saw the inside of a laboratory cage.
早在人們看到老鼠被關(guān)進實驗室籠子之前，老鼠就被一些愛好者當(dāng)作寵物飼養(yǎng)了。
Dr Krasnow's plan to add mouse lemurs to the list was slightly less accidental than these.
克拉斯諾博士將鼠狐猴添加到名單中的計劃與這些計劃相比，不那么偶然。
It began in 2009, when he charged his daughter Maya, then still at school, and two of her friends to come up with a new model organism for studying primates as a summer project in his laboratory.
這件事始于2009年，當(dāng)時他要求當(dāng)時還在上學(xué)的女兒瑪雅和她的兩個朋友想出一種新的有機體模型，作為他實驗室的夏季項目，用于研究靈長類動物。
After reviewing the gamut of the primate order, which contains about 500 species, and also looking at a few outliers such as tree shrews, Krasnow junior and her two compadres settled on mouse lemurs.
在考慮了大概500個靈長類動物，并觀察了一些離群點，如樹懶之后，小克拉斯諾和她的兩個同伴選擇了鼠狐猴。
Not only are these abundant and fast-breeding, they also do well in captivity, as a 60-year-old colony of them in France testifies.
它們不僅數(shù)量眾多、繁殖迅速，而且在圈養(yǎng)條件下也很好，這是它們在法國長達60年的殖民地生活的證明。
Not one to ignore his daughter's advice, Dr Krasnow investigated in more detail.
克拉斯諾博士沒有忽視女兒的建議，他對此進行了更詳細的調(diào)查。
In 2011, he organised a workshop of lemur biologists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Virginia, to kick the idea around.
2011年，他在弗吉尼亞州霍華德·休斯醫(yī)學(xué)院組織了一次狐猴生物學(xué)家研討會，探討這一想法。
It found favour, and in particular it accelerated the completion of a genome-sequencing project for the animals—a sine qua non for any self-respecting model organism.
這一想法得到了青睞，尤其是會加速動物基因組測序項目的完成，這是任何靠譜的模式生物的必要條件。
It also introduced Dr Krasnow to the idea that fieldwork might be an important part of his proposal.
也讓克拉斯諾博士意識到，田野調(diào)查可能是他提案的重要組成部分。
That, in some ways, is the most intriguing idea of the lot.
在某種程度上，這是最有趣的想法。
Most biologists working with model organisms make a fetish of control.
大多數(shù)從事模式生物研究的生物學(xué)家都有一種對控制的迷戀。
Mice, in particular, are often bred deliberately to be as genetically similar to one another as possible, within a given line.
特別是老鼠，在特定的品系中，經(jīng)常被有意地培養(yǎng)成基因上盡可能相似的同類。
Dr Krasnow has the opposite plan.
克拉斯諾博士的計劃正好相反。
Genetic analysis is now so cheap that every animal involved in a project can be sequenced.
現(xiàn)在基因分析價格低廉，所以參與項目的每一只動物都可以被測序。
Made visible in this way, diversity is as much an opportunity as a problem, for that information can be correlated not only with obvious, medically relevant stuff, such as disease manifestation, but also with behaviour—and behaviour expressed in the wild, not just in the restricted environment of a laboratory.
通過這種方式，多樣性既是一個問題，也是一個機會，因為這些信息不僅可以與明顯的醫(yī)學(xué)上相關(guān)的東西相關(guān)，比如疾病的表現(xiàn)，還可以與行為以及在野外表達的行為相關(guān)聯(lián)，而不僅僅是在受限的實驗室環(huán)境中。
That insight led to collaboration with Patricia Wright, a primatologist at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, who helped encourage the Malagasy government to found Ranomafana, and who has been working there for decades.
這種洞察力促成了與紐約州立大學(xué)石溪分校靈長類動物學(xué)家帕特里夏·賴特的合作，后者幫助鼓勵馬達加斯加政府成立了拉諾馬法納，并在那里工作了數(shù)十年。
And that led to the lemur-trapping project now joined by Judah.
這導(dǎo)致了誘捕狐猴的項目，也就是猶大加入的這個項目。
One early discovery from the genetic analyses made possible by this project (admittedly, one that is not of much obvious medical use) is that what appeared to be one species of brown mouse lemur, the species Dr Krasnow and Dr Wright thought they were investigating, is actually two.
這個項目使得遺傳分析的一個早期發(fā)現(xiàn)成為可能，（誠然，這是一種在醫(yī)學(xué)用途不是很明顯的物種），表面上看起來是一種棕色鼠狐猴，克拉斯諾博士和賴特博士認為他們正在研究的物種，實際上是兩種。
They live in the same range and are indistinguishable to the human eye.
它們生活在同一范圍內(nèi)，肉眼難以分辨。
But they can clearly tell each other apart because their genetics show that they diverged several million years ago, and do not interbreed.
但它們可以清楚地區(qū)分彼此，因為它們的基因表明，它們在幾百萬年前就已經(jīng)分化，而且沒有雜交。
