DNA: The book of you - Joe Hanson

DNA：你的說明書 - 喬伊．漢森

Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar

譯者: Hao-Wei Chang 審譯者: Jephian Lin

Every human being starts out the same way:

每個人生命都有相同的開始：

two cells, one from each parent,

分別來自父親和母親

的兩個細胞

found each other and became one.

相遇並合而為一。

And that one cell reproduced itself,

接著這個細胞複製自己，

dividing, dividing and dividing

分裂、

分裂、

再分裂

until there were 10 trillion of them.

直到達到十兆個細胞。

Do you realize there's more cells in one person's body

你知道人身體細胞的數目

比銀河裡的星星還多嗎？

than there are stars in the Milky Way?

But those 10 trillion cells aren't just sitting there in a big pile.

但這十兆個細胞不只是隨便堆成一堆。

That would make for a pretty boring human being!

這樣的人類應該看起來很無趣吧！

So what is it that says a nose is a nose,

那什麼決定鼻子要成為鼻子、

and toes is toes?

腳趾成為腳趾呢？

What is it that says this is bone

什麼決定這個成為骨頭、

and this is brain

那個成為大腦、

and this is heart

那個成為心臟、

and this is that little thing in the back of your throat

和那個在你喉嚨深處的東西—─

那個你一直記不起名稱的東西？

you can never remember the name of?

任何組成你的部份

Everything you are or ever will be made of

都來自一份小小的、

starts as a tiny book of instructions

可在任何細胞中找到的說明書。

found in each and every cell.

Every time your body wants to make something,

每次你的身體想要建造什麼東西時，

都會回去看這本說明書

it goes back to the instruction book,

再進行建造。

looks it up and puts it together.

So how does one cell hold all that information?

那細胞是如何保存這些資訊呢？

Let's get small.

讓它壓縮變小。

I mean, really small -- smaller than the tip of a sewing needle.

我是說，非常小、

比針尖還小。

Then we can take a journey inside a single cell

如果我們能走進細胞

to find out what makes up the book of you,

去探究這本書的組成，

your genome.

我們會發現：你的基因體。

The first thing we see is that the whole genome, all your DNA,

首先我們要瞭解基因體，

也就是你所有的DNA，

is contained inside its own tiny compartment,

是被存放在一個叫做細胞核

called the nucleus.

的小地方。

If we stretched out all the DNA in this one cell into a single thread,

如果我們把一個細胞的 DNA 拉直

成一條線，

這條線會超過 3 英尺（約 91 公分）！

it would be over 3 feet long!

We have to make it fit in a tiny compartment

我們比須把它局限在一個

僅百萬分之一倍的小空間。

that's a million times smaller.

We could just bunch it up like Christmas lights,

我們可以把它亂捲一通，像聖誔燈一般，

but that could get messy.

但這樣就太凌亂了。

We need some organization.

我們需要一些整理方法。

First, the long thread of DNA wraps around proteins

首先，線狀的 DNA 會纏繞一些蛋白質

clustered into little beads called nucleosomes,

變成稱為核小體的小珠子，

which end up looking like a long, beaded necklace.

它會看起來像是一條長長的串珠項鏈。

And that necklace is wrapped up in its own spiral,

接著，這條項鏈會繞成

像是電話線一樣的螺旋。

like an old telephone cord.

And those spirals get layered on top of one another

再來，這些螺旋會相互交疊

until we get a neat little shape that fits inside the nucleus.

直到可以整齊地放進細胞核中。

Voilà! Three feet of DNA squeezed into a tiny compartment.

哇！3 英尺的DNA就這樣擠進小小的空間。

If only we could hire DNA to pack our suitcases!

真希望我們可以用相同的機制打包行李！

Each tiny mass of DNA is called a chromosome.

每一小團 DNA 被成為染色體。

The book of you would have 46 chapters,

在這本說明書中有 46 章

one for each chromosome.

每一章就是一條染色體。

Twenty-three chapters of your book came from your mom,

說明書的其中 23 章來自你的母親，

and 23 chapters came from your dad.

另外則來自你的父親。

Two of those chapters, called "X" and "Y,"

其中被稱為 X 和 Y 的兩章，

determine if you're male, "XY,"

會決定你是男生，也就是 XY；

or female, "XX."

或是女生，也就是 XX。

它們會組成兩套幾乎相同

Put them together, and we get

two almost identical but slightly different sets of 23 chapters.

卻又有些微差異的23章。

The tiny variations are what makes each person different.

這些微差異就造成了人與人之間的不同。

It's estimated that all the chapters together

如果把所有的章節都列入計算

hold about 20,000 individual instructions, called genes.

大約會有兩萬筆說明，也就是基因。

Written out, all those 20,000 instructions

如果把這兩萬筆說明全部寫下來

are 30 million letters long!

會長達三千萬個字母！

If someone were writing one letter per second,

如果人可以一秒鐘寫一個字母，

那也需要花將近一年才能寫完一次。

it would take them almost an entire year to write it once.

然而，我們的說明書比

It turns out that our genome book is much, much longer

than just those 30 million letters --

三千萬個字母還長出許多—

almost 100 times longer!

將近是它的一百倍！

What are all those extra pages for?

那這些多餘的書頁又寫了些什麼呢？

Well, each page of instructions has a few pages of nonsense inserted

嗯，每部份的說明都會插入幾頁無意義的編碼。

我們必須先將這些亂碼移除才能看到有意義的資訊。

that have to be taken out before we end up with something useful.

The parts we throw out, we call introns.

這部份我們移除的亂碼被稱為內插子。

The instructions we keep, we call exons.

而保留下來的資訊被稱為外顯子。

We can also have hundreds of pages in between each gene.

我們的基因與基因之間也可能有幾百頁的亂碼。

有些是在我們的祖先被病毒感染時

Some of these excess pages were inserted

所插入的多餘頁面。

by nasty little infections in our ancestors,

but some of them are actually helpful.

但也有些看似無意的頁面是有用的。

They protect the ends of each chapter from being damaged,

它們可以保護章節的頭尾免於破壞，

or some help our cells find a particular thing they're looking for,

或當作索引，

or give a cell a signal to stop making something.

也有可能是當作停止製造的訊號。

All in all, for every page of instructions,

總而言之，在每部份說明中

there's almost 100 pages of filler.

大約包含了一百頁的內容。

In the end, each of our books' 46 chapters

最後，我們書的 46 章

會介於 4.8 千萬到 2.5 億個字母長。

is between 48 and 250 million letters long.

That's 3.2 billion letters total!

共計三十二億個字母！

To type all that copy,

若以打字方式複製，你需要花上一百年，

you'd be at it for over 100 years,

而且這本書會超過六十萬頁。

and the book would be over 600,000 pages long.

Every type of cell carries the same book,

每一種細胞都帶有相同的說明書，

but each has a set of bookmarks

但是會有不同的索引幫助搜尋

that tell it exactly which pages it needs to look up.

它們需要看的頁面。

So a bone cell reads only the set of instructions it needs to become bone.

所以骨細胞只會看和生成骨頭相關的指引。

你的腦細胞

Your brain cells,

they read the set that tells them how to become brain.

會閱讀組成大腦所需的部份。

If some cells suddenly decide to start reading other instructions,

如果一個細胞突然開始閱讀其他的指引

他們就可以從一種細胞轉換成另一種。

they can actually change from one type to another.

So every little cell in your body is holding on to an amazing book,

你身體裡每一個細胞都帶著這本神奇的書，

full of the instructions for life.

這本書充滿對生命所有的註解。

Your nose reads nose pages,

你的鼻子閱讀關於鼻子的部份，

your toes read toes pages.

你的腳趾則閱讀關於腳趾的部份，

And that little thing in the back of your throat?

而你喉嚨深處的那個小東西

It's got its own pages, too.

也有屬於自己的章節。

They're under "uvula."

就是標示「懸雍垂」的那幾頁。