英语听力文摘 English Digest 486、眼睛发光的蝴蝶（在线收听）

a butterfly with glowing eyes 

Believe it or not, Monteiro and her team inserted a new gene into the butterfly’s genetic sequence–one taken from a jellyfish.

No, I know you're fooling.

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.

That's weird!

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.

信不信由你，蒙泰罗和他的团队在蝴蝶的基因序列中插入了一种新基因，是来自水母的一个基因。

不，我知道你在开玩笑。

实际上我并没有。事实上，这种基因是一种使得某些水母发冷光的绿色荧光蛋白。通过从水母样品中取一点这种基因出来，把它们附在一些天生就知道怎么把自己插入一个基因序列的改良过的DNA中，然后将这种带有捎带式水母基因的DNA注入一些蝶卵中，研究者们就可以生产出眼睛闪闪发光的蝴蝶了。这个实验在其他昆虫身上已经做过了，但这是史上第一只转基因蝴蝶。

真奇怪！

这一想法并不是想制造出看起来怪异的蝴蝶，而是这闪闪发光的蛋白充当着标记的角色。也就是说，当你成功的将之插入一个新的生物体后，能很明显的看到它的存在。这仅仅是基础研究，也许有一天能让我们更大范围的修改基因序列——比如，摆脱遗传性疾病。