Michael Archer: How we'll resurrect the gastric brooding frog, the Tasmanian tiger

51,204 views ・ 2013-06-27

TED


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00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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翻译人员: Rong Han 校对人员: Ying Wang
00:12
I do want to test this question we're all interested in:
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我很想检验一个我们都很感兴趣的问题:
00:15
Does extinction have to be forever?
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物种灭绝一定是永久的吗?
00:18
I'm focused on two projects I want to tell you about.
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我要告诉你们的是两个我所关注的项目,
00:21
One is the Thylacine Project.
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其中一个是关于袋狼的;
00:23
The other one is the Lazarus Project,
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另一个叫“拉撒路”项目,
00:25
and that's focused on the gastric-brooding frog.
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着重于胃育蛙。
00:27
And it would be a fair question to ask,
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大家有可能会问,
00:29
why have we focused on these two animals?
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为什么我们选择把重点放在这两个动物上?
00:32
Well, point number one, each of them represents a unique family of its own.
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首先,这两个物种
都分别代表着一个独特的科。
00:37
We've lost a whole family.
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我们失去了整整一个科的生物,
00:39
That's a big chunk of the global genome gone.
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也就是说全球基因组的一大块被丢掉了,
00:41
I'd like it back.
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而我想把它找回来。
00:43
The second reason is that we killed these things.
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第二个原因是因为,是我们,使这两个物种灭绝的。
00:47
In the case of the thylacine, regrettably, we shot every one that we saw.
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以袋狼为例,令人遗憾的是
我们将所有袋狼都猎杀了。我们屠杀了整个种群。
00:52
We slaughtered them.
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00:54
In the case of the gastric-brooding frog, we may have "fungicided" it to death.
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而对于胃育蛙来说,
我们可能用“真菌”将它们置于死地了。
00:59
There's a dreadful fungus that's moving through the world
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有一种可怕的真菌在全世界传播,
叫作“壶菌”,
01:02
that's called the chytrid fungus,
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它们感染了世界各地的胃育蛙。
01:04
and it's nailing frogs all over the world.
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01:06
We think that's probably what got this frog,
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我们认为这很可能是胃育蛙灭绝的原因,
01:08
and humans are spreading this fungus.
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而正是人类使这些真菌到处传播。
01:10
And this introduces a very important ethical point,
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这就引出了一个很重要的道德问题,
01:13
and I think you will have heard this many times
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我想每当提起动物灭绝时,
01:15
when this topic comes up.
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大家可能就会听到这个问题了。
01:17
What I think is important
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我认为重要的是,
01:19
is that, if it's clear that we exterminated these species,
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如果很明显是我们使这些动物灭绝的,
01:22
then I think we not only have a moral obligation
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那我觉得,我们不仅有道德上的义务
01:26
to see what we can do about it,
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来看看我们能做点什么,而且我认为,
01:27
but I think we've got a moral imperative to try to do something, if we can.
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如果可能的话,我们有道德上的责任来尝试做点什么。
01:32
OK. Let me talk to you about the Lazarus Project.
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好,我来跟你们说说“拉撒路”项目。
01:35
It's a frog. And you think, frog.
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是关于一种青蛙的。你可能会想,青蛙?
01:38
Yeah, but this was not just any frog.
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对,但这可不是一般的青蛙。
01:41
Unlike a normal frog, which lays its eggs in the water
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普通的青蛙,在水中产卵之后
01:44
and goes away and wishes its froglets well,
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就游走了,只是期盼幼蛙能活下来。
01:47
this frog swallowed its fertilized eggs,
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而胃育蛙会将受精卵吞下,
吞到本来应该装食物的胃里去,
01:51
swallowed them into the stomach, where it should be having food,
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01:54
didn't digest the eggs, and turned its stomach into a uterus.
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却不会将卵消化掉,
而是将胃变成了子宫。
01:59
In the stomach, the eggs went on to develop into tadpoles,
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在胃里,这些卵发育成蝌蚪,
02:02
and in the stomach, the tadpoles went on to develop into frogs,
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蝌蚪也是在胃里长成青蛙,
02:06
and they grew in the stomach
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它们在胃里一直长,
02:08
until eventually the poor old frog was at risk of bursting apart.
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直到可怜的老青蛙都快被撑破了。
02:12
It has a little cough and a hiccup, and out comes sprays of little frogs.
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然后它咳嗽一下,打个嗝
小青蛙们就喷出来了。
02:16
Now, when biologists saw this, they were agog.
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生物学家们看到这一现象的时候大吃一惊,
02:19
They thought, this is incredible.
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他们觉得这太不可思议了。
02:20
No animal, let alone a frog, has been known to do this,
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没有任何已知的动物,更别说青蛙了,
02:24
to change one organ in the body into another.
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会像这样将体内的一种器官变成另一种器官。
02:26
And you can imagine the medical world went nuts over this as well.
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可想而知医学界也为之疯狂。
02:30
If we could understand
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如果我们能够弄清楚胃育蛙是怎么
02:32
how that frog is managing the way its tummy works,
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控制它的肚子的,那我们是不是
02:35
is there information here that we need to understand
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有可能找到一些有用的信息,
02:37
or could usefully use to help ourselves?
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来帮助我们自己呢?
02:41
Now, I'm not suggesting we want to raise our babies in our stomach,
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我可不是说要把我们的宝宝放在胃里养,
02:44
but I am suggesting it's possible
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我的建议是我们或许可以
02:46
we might want to manage gastric secretion in the gut.
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有办法来调整胃液的分泌。
02:48
And just as everybody got excited about it, bang!
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当大家都对此感到兴奋的时候,“砰”的一声,
02:51
It was extinct.
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这种蛙灭绝了。
我打了个电话给我的朋友,
02:54
I called up my friend,
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02:55
Professor Mike Tyler in the University of Adelaide.
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阿德莱德大学的迈克•泰勒教授。
他是最后一个曾有过这种青蛙的人,
02:58
He was the last person who had this frog, a colony of these things, in his lab.
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他的实验室里有过一群。
03:02
And I said, "Mike, by any chance --" This was 30 or 40 years ago.
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我说:“迈克,有没有可能,”
这是三四十年前的事了,
03:05
"By any chance had you kept any frozen tissue of this frog?"
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“有没有可能你还留了一些这种青蛙的冷冻组织呢?”
03:09
And he thought about it,
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他想了想,然后就到他的深度冷冻柜里,
03:10
and he went to his deep freezer, minus 20 degrees centigrade,
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摄氏零下二十度的那种,
03:14
and he poured through everything in the freezer,
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把所有东西都翻了一遍。
在最底下有一个罐子,
03:16
and there in the bottom was a jar and it contained tissues of these frogs.
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里面就装着胃育蛙的冷冻组织。
03:20
This was very exciting,
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这让我们很激动,不过我们也没有理由
03:22
but there was no reason why we should expect that this would work,
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来确信这件事能成功,
03:25
because this tissue had not had any antifreeze put in it,
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因为这块组织中没有加过任何防冻剂,
03:29
cryoprotectants, to look after it when it was frozen.
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也叫冰冻防护剂,来保护它不被冻坏。
03:33
And normally, when water freezes, as you know, it expands,
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通常来说,水结冰的时候会膨胀,
03:35
and the same thing happens in a cell.
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在细胞里也是一样。
03:37
If you freeze tissues, the water expands, damages or bursts the cell walls.
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当你将组织冷冻时,水会膨胀
损坏或者撑破细胞膜。
我们把组织放到显微镜下观察时,
03:42
Well, we looked at the tissue under the microscope.
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03:44
It actually didn't look bad. The cell walls looked intact.
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发现看起来并不差,细胞膜还很完整。
所以我们想,就试一试吧。
03:47
So we thought, let's give it a go.
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我们用的是一种被称作
03:49
What we did is something called somatic cell nuclear transplantation.
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“体细胞核移植”的技术。
03:53
We took the eggs of a related species, a living frog,
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我们从与胃育蛙有亲缘关系的一个物种,一只活青蛙中取了卵,
03:57
and we inactivated the nucleus of the egg.
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然后我们将卵子的细胞核灭活,
04:00
We used ultraviolet radiation to do that.
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这是用紫外线辐射来做到的。
04:02
And then we took the dead nucleus from the dead tissue of the extinct frog
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然后我们从已经灭绝的青蛙的死组织中, 提取出死了的细胞核,
再将它们植入到刚才说的活蛙卵中。
04:07
and we inserted those nuclei into that egg.
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04:10
Now, by rights, this is kind of like a cloning project,
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这看起来有点儿像克隆技术了,就是制造出多利羊的技术,
不过实际上很不一样的。
04:14
like what produced Dolly,
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04:15
but it's actually very different,
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04:16
because Dolly was live sheep into live sheep cells.
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因为“多利”是从活羊身上取细胞再放到活羊卵中,
04:19
That was a miracle, but it was workable.
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“多利”是一个奇迹,但是还是有可能做到的;
而我们试图做的是取出一个灭绝的物种的死细胞核,
04:22
What we're trying to do is take a dead nucleus from an extinct species
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04:25
and put it into a completely different species and expect that to work.
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然后放到一个完全不同的物种中,还期望能成功。
04:29
Well, we had no real reason to expect it would,
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我们其实没有什么理由能希望它成功。
04:31
and we tried hundreds and hundreds of these.
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我们试了好几百次,
04:34
And just last February, the last time we did these trials,
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然后就在二月份我们上一次试验的时候,
04:37
I saw a miracle starting to happen.
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我看到奇迹开始发生了。
大多数的卵都没有发育,
04:41
What we found was most of these eggs didn't work,
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04:44
but then suddenly, one of them began to divide.
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但是我们突然发现有一个卵开始分裂了。
04:47
That was so exciting.
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这真是太让我们激动了。然后这个卵子又分裂了一次,
04:48
And then the egg divided again. And then again.
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然后又一次,很快,我们就有了一个
04:51
And pretty soon, we had early-stage embryos
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由几百个细胞组成的早期胚胎。
04:54
with hundreds of cells forming those.
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04:57
We even DNA-tested some of these cells,
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我们甚至对一些细胞做了DNA测试,
而这些细胞的确含有胃育蛙的DNA。
05:00
and the DNA of the extinct frog is in those cells.
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05:04
So we're very excited. This is not a tadpole. It's not a frog.
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所以我们非常兴奋。这还不是蝌蚪,
也还不是青蛙,但它已经是我们制造,或者说复活,
05:07
But it's a long way along the journey
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05:10
to producing, or bringing back, an extinct species.
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已灭绝物种的征途中的一大步了。
05:13
And this is news.
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这无疑是一个重大新闻,我们之前还没有公开过这一消息。
05:14
We haven't announced this publicly before.
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我们非常兴奋。现在我们需要跨越这一阶段,
05:17
We're excited.
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05:18
We've got to get past this point.
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05:19
We now want this ball of cells to start to gastrulate,
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我们希望这些细胞开始形成原肠胚,
05:22
to turn in so that it will produce the other tissues.
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细胞向里移动,这样就能够开始形成其他的组织。
05:25
It'll go on and produce a tadpole and then a frog.
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继续下去就能形成一只蝌蚪,然后是一只青蛙。
05:28
Watch this space.
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看着这个地方,我认为我们会见到一只胃育蛙
05:30
I think we're going to have this frog hopping
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因为重新回到这个世界而高兴地跳来跳去的。
05:32
glad to be back in the world again.
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谢谢。(掌声)
05:34
(Applause)
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05:36
Thank you.
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05:37
(Applause)
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05:39
We haven't done it yet, but keep the applause ready.
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我们现在还没做到,但是希望各位准备好为我们鼓掌。
我想在这儿讲的第二个项目,是袋狼项目。
05:43
The second project I want to talk to you about is the Thylacine Project.
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05:47
The thylacine looks a bit, to most people, like a dog,
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对于大多数人来说,袋狼看起来有点像狗,
05:50
or maybe like a tiger, because it has stripes.
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也有点像老虎,因为它身上有条纹。
但是它与狗和老虎都没有关系。
05:53
But it's not related to any of those. It's a marsupial.
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它属于有袋动物,在育幼袋中抚养幼崽,
05:55
It raised its young in a pouch, like a koala or a kangaroo would do,
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就像考拉或者袋鼠那样。
袋狼这个物种的历史很久远,
06:00
and it has a long history, a long, fascinating history,
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06:05
that goes back 25 million years.
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可以追溯到2500万年前,
不过也是一段很悲惨的历史。
06:08
But it's also a tragic history.
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06:10
The first one that we see occurs in the ancient rain forests of Australia
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最早的袋狼出现在2500万年前
澳大利亚的古热带雨林中。
06:15
about 25 million years ago,
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国家地理协会正帮助我们
06:17
and the National Geographic Society
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06:19
is helping us to explore these fossil deposits.
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勘探那儿的化石沉积物。这里是里弗斯利(澳大利亚著名化石点),
06:21
This is Riversleigh.
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06:23
In those fossil rocks are some amazing animals.
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在这些化石中保存了令人惊奇的动物。
06:26
We found marsupial lions.
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我们看到了有袋的狮子,
06:28
We found carnivorous kangaroos.
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还有肉食性的袋鼠,
06:30
It's not what you usually think about as a kangaroo,
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不是我们平常想象的那种袋鼠,
而是真正吃肉的袋鼠。
06:33
but these are meat-eating kangaroos.
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我们还看到了世界上最大的鸟,
06:35
We found the biggest bird in the world,
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06:37
bigger than that thing that was in Madagascar,
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比马达加斯加的那种鸟还大,
06:39
and it too was a flesh eater.
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而且它也是食肉的,是一种巨大而怪异的鸭子。
06:40
It was a giant, weird duck.
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06:43
And crocodiles were not behaving at that time either.
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当时的鳄鱼的行为也和现在不一样。
06:45
You think of crocodiles as doing their ugly thing,
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你可能会认为鳄鱼就是丑丑地
06:48
sitting in a pool of water.
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呆在水里。
06:49
These crocodiles were actually out on the land
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可这些鳄鱼是呆在陆地上的,
06:52
and they were even climbing trees and jumping on prey on the ground.
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它们甚至爬到树上,
然后朝地上的猎物身上扑下来。
06:57
We had, in Australia, drop crocs. They really do exist.
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这种会跳下来的鳄鱼在澳大利亚确实存在过,
07:01
(Laughter)
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07:02
But what they were dropping on was not only other weird animals
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而被它们扑倒的动物,
不仅有其他稀奇古怪的动物,还有袋狼。
07:05
but also thylacines.
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07:07
There were five different kinds of thylacines in those ancient forests,
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在那片原始森林中有五种不同的袋狼,
它们的体型从大到中,
07:11
and they ranged from great big ones to middle-sized ones
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07:15
to one that was about the size of a chihuahua.
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到小得像吉娃娃狗那么大。
07:19
Paris Hilton would have been able
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帕丽斯•希尔顿(如果生活在那时候)就可以
在小手提包中装一只带着走,
07:21
to carry one of these things around in a little handbag,
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07:23
until a drop croc landed on her.
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直到一只鳄鱼扑到她身上。
07:25
At any rate, it was a fascinating place,
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无论如何,那是个令人惊奇的地方。
07:27
but unfortunately, Australia didn't stay this way.
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但不幸的是,澳大利亚并没有能保持原样。
07:30
Climate change has affected the world for a long period of time,
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气候变迁已经影响这个世界很久了,
07:33
and gradually, the forests disappeared, the country began to dry out,
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渐渐地,森林消失了,
气候开始变得干燥,
07:38
and the number of kinds of thylacines began to decline,
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袋狼的种类也开始减少,
07:40
until by five million years ago,
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到五百万年前,就只剩下一种了。
07:42
only one left.
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07:43
By 10,000 years ago, they had disappeared from New Guinea,
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一万年前,它们从新几内亚
消失了。更不幸的是,
07:47
and unfortunately, by 4,000 years ago, somebodies, we don't know who this was,
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四千前,某些人,
我们也不知道是谁,把野狗
07:54
introduced dingoes -- this is a very archaic kind of a dog --
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--这是一种自古就有的狗--引入了澳洲。
07:57
into Australia.
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你们看,这种野狗的体型
07:59
And as you can see,
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08:00
dingoes are very similar in their body form to thylacines.
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和袋狼很像,
08:03
That similarity meant they probably competed.
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这种相似性说明它们之间可能会相互竞争,
08:06
They were eating the same kinds of foods.
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它们可能会吃同样的食物。
很有可能当地人还把
08:08
It's even possible that aborigines were keeping some of these dingoes as pets,
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这种狗养来做宠物,这样一来,
08:12
and therefore they may have had an advantage in the battle for survival.
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它们在这场生存竞争中就占了优势。
08:16
All we know is, soon after the dingoes were brought in,
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我们只知道,野狗被引入澳洲后不久,
08:18
thylacines were extinct in the Australian mainland,
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袋狼就从澳洲大陆消失了,
08:21
and after that they only survived in Tasmania.
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之后仅存于塔斯马尼亚岛。
08:25
Then, unfortunately,
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这个袋狼故事的另一段惨剧,
08:26
the next sad part of the thylacine story is that Europeans arrived in 1788,
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就是1788年欧洲人来到了澳洲,并且带来了
08:31
and they brought with them the things they valued,
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他们看中觉得重要的东西,其中就有绵羊。
08:34
and that included sheep.
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当他们看到塔斯马尼亚的袋狼时,
08:36
They took one look at the thylacine in Tasmania,
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08:38
and they thought, hang on, this is not going to work.
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.他们想,等等,这不行呀,
08:42
That guy is going to eat all our sheep.
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这家伙会把我们的羊都吃了呀。
08:44
That was not what happened, actually.
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事实并不是这样的。
野外的狗吃了一些羊,但是袋狼却背了个恶名。
08:47
Wild dogs did eat a few of the sheep, but the thylacine got a bad rap.
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08:50
But immediately, the government said, that's it, let's get rid of them,
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但是政府立刻就说,我们受够了,
得把它们除掉。他们付钱给民众们
08:54
and they paid people to slaughter every one that they saw.
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去屠杀每一头袋狼。
08:58
By the early 1930s,
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到三四十年代早期时,有三四千头袋狼
09:00
3,000 to 4,000 thylacines had been murdered.
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被猎杀了。
09:04
It was a disaster, and they were about to hit the wall.
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真的是一场灾难。
来看看这一段电影片段,
09:09
Have a look at this bit of film footage.
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09:11
It makes me very sad because, while it's a fascinating animal,
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这段电影让我很难过,因为这是一头很稀奇的动物,
09:15
and it's amazing to think that we had the technology to film it
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而且想想我们竟然在它们掉下灭绝的悬崖之前,
09:20
before it actually plunged off that cliff of extinction,
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已有了给它们录影的技术,真的是很奇特。
09:24
we didn't, unfortunately, at this same time,
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不幸的是,当时我们对
09:27
have a molecule of concern about the welfare for this species.
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这种动物的安危一丁点都不关心。
09:31
These are photos of the last surviving thylacine, Benjamin,
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这里拍的是世界上最后一头袋狼,叫本杰明,
09:34
who was in the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart.
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它当时在候巴特的布马里斯动物园。
09:37
To add insult to injury,
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如同在伤口上撒了一把盐,当我们把这一物种搞得
09:39
having swept this species nearly off the table,
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几近灭绝的时候,又让这头动物因疏于照料而死。
09:43
this animal, when it died of neglect --
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09:45
The keepers didn't let it into the hutch on a cold night in Hobart.
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一个寒冷的晚上,
管理员没把它放回狼舍,把它冻死了。
09:50
It died of exposure, and in the morning, when they found the body of Benjamin,
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早上人们发现本杰明的尸体时,
09:53
they still cared so little for this animal that they threw the body in the dump.
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还是对它一点都不关心,
把它扔到垃圾堆去了。
10:00
Does it have to stay this way?
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一直都只能是这样了吗?
10:03
In 1990, I was in the Australian Museum.
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1990年我在澳大利亚博物馆工作,
10:06
I was fascinated by thylacines.
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对袋狼很着迷。我一直都对这种动物感兴趣。
10:07
I've always been obsessed with these animals.
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当时我正在研究头骨,试图研究
10:10
And I was studying skulls,
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10:11
trying to figure out their relationships to other sorts of animals,
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袋狼和其他动物之间的亲缘关系。
10:14
and I saw this jar,
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在那儿我看到一个罐子,
10:16
and here, in the jar, was a little girl thylacine pup,
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里面装着一只小母袋狼仔,大约六个月大。
10:21
perhaps six months old.
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10:22
The guy who had found it and killed the mother
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发现它的那个人杀了它的母亲,
然后把这只幼崽腌了起来,腌在了酒精里。
10:25
had pickled the pup, and they pickled it in alcohol.
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10:28
I'm a paleontologist, but I still knew alcohol was a DNA preservative.
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我虽然是个古生物学家,但我也知道酒精可以保存DNA。
10:32
But this was 1990, and I asked my geneticist friends,
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那还是1990年,我就问我的遗传学家朋友们,
10:36
couldn't we think about going into this pup
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我们可不可以想办法从这只幼崽身上
10:38
and extracting DNA, if it's there,
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提取DNA,如果能提出来的话,
10:41
and then somewhere down the line in the future,
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在将来某个时候,
可不可以用这些DNA来复活袋狼呢?
10:44
we'll use this DNA to bring the thylacine back?
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遗传学家们都笑了。不过那时距多利羊的出现还有六年,
10:46
The geneticists laughed. But this was six years before Dolly.
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10:50
Cloning was science fiction.
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克隆技术还没出现,还被认为是科学幻想。
10:52
It had not happened.
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10:53
But then suddenly cloning did happen.
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但是突然之间克隆技术出现了,
10:56
And I thought, when I became director of the Australian Museum,
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我就想,等我当上
澳大利亚博物馆的馆长,我得试试。
10:59
I'm going to give this a go.
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11:00
I put a team together.
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我组织了一队人马,
11:02
We went into that pup to see what was in it,
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看看我们能从这只幼崽身上弄出什么来。
11:05
and we did find thylacine DNA.
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我们的确提取出了袋狼DNA,那真是一个鼓舞人心的时刻,
11:07
It was a eureka moment. We were very excited.
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我们都激动坏了。
11:09
Unfortunately, we also found a lot of human DNA.
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不幸的是,我们也提出了很多人类的DNA。
11:13
Every old curator who'd been in that museum
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那座博物馆的每一位老馆长,
11:16
had seen this wonderful specimen,
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都看到了这个奇妙的标本,
他们把手伸进罐子里,把它拽出来,心想:
11:18
put their hand in the jar, pulled it out and thought,
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11:20
"Wow, look at that," plop, dropped it back in the jar,
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”哇,瞧瞧这个”,啪,又把它扔回罐子里了。
这样他们就把这个标本污染了。
11:23
contaminating this specimen.
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11:24
And that was a worry.
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这有点令人担心。如果我们的目标是提出DNA来,
11:26
If the goal here was to get the DNA out
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11:28
and use the DNA down the track to try to bring a thylacine back,
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以后再用这个DNA来试着把袋狼复活,
那我们可不希望当我们把这些遗传信息
11:32
what we didn't want happening
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11:33
when the information was shoved into the machine
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传到机器里去的时候,机器一转,
11:36
and the wheel turned around and the lights flashed,
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灯光一闪,然后从机器的另一头
11:38
was to have a wizened old horrible curator pop out the other end of the machine.
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出来个干瘪吓人的老馆长。(笑声)
11:42
It would've kept the curator very happy, but it wasn't going to keep us happy.
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老馆长会很高兴,
但是我们可就不会了。
所以我们又回去仔细研究这个样本,
11:46
So we went back to these specimens and we started digging around,
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11:49
and particularly, we looked into the teeth of skulls,
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特别是头骨中的牙齿部分,
11:52
hard parts where humans had not been able to get their fingers,
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这些坚硬的部分没有人用手碰过。
11:55
and we found much better quality DNA.
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这回我们提出了更高质量的DNA,
细胞核基因,线粒体基因,都在。
11:58
We found nuclear mitochondrial genes.
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12:00
It's there. So we got it.
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我们得到了袋狼DNA。
12:01
OK. What could we do with this stuff?
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那现在我们能做什么呢?
12:04
Well, George Church, in his book, "Regenesis,"
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乔治•丘奇在《重生》那本书里,
12:06
has mentioned many of the techniques that are rapidly advancing
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提到了很多正在迅猛发展的技术,
12:09
to work with fragmented DNA.
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专门用于这类DNA片段。
12:11
We would hope that we'll be able to get that DNA back into a viable form,
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我们希望能把这些DNA连接成类似于从活体中提的DNA,
然后呢,就像我们在拉撒路项目中做的那样,
12:16
and then, much like we've done with the Lazarus Project,
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12:18
get that stuff into an egg of a host species.
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把它放到一个受体物种的卵中。
12:21
It has to be a different species. What could it be?
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必须得是一个不同的物种,
用什么呢?为什么不能用塔斯马尼亚袋獾呢?
12:24
Why couldn't it be a Tasmanian devil?
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12:26
They're related, distantly, to thylacines.
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它们是袋狼的远亲,
12:28
And then the Tasmanian devil is going to pop a thylacine out the south end.
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这样袋獾就会生出
一只袋狼了。
12:33
Critics of this project say, hang on.
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这个项目的批评家们说,等等
12:36
Thylacine, Tasmanian devil? That's going to hurt.
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袋狼,袋獾?生的时候会疼啊。
12:40
No, it's not. These are marsupials.
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其实不会的,它们都是有袋类,
12:43
They give birth to babies that are the size of a jelly bean.
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它们生的宝宝只有果冻豆那么大。
袋獾都不会知道它生了什么,
12:46
That Tasmanian devil's not even going to know it gave birth.
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12:49
It is, shortly, going to think
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不过它很快就会觉得它生下了
12:50
it's got the ugliest Tasmanian devil baby in the world,
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世界上最丑的袋獾宝宝了,
所以它可能需要我们帮它一下来留下这个宝宝。
12:54
so maybe it'll need some help to keep it going.
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12:58
Andrew Pask and his colleagues have demonstrated
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安德鲁•帕斯克和他的同事们已经证明了
13:00
this might not be a waste of time.
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这并非是纯粹浪费时间。
13:02
And it's sort of in the future, we haven't got there yet,
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这还是以后的事,我们还没到那一步呢,
不过这是我们需要考虑的问题了。
13:05
but it's the kind of thing we want to think about.
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他们取了一些这个袋狼的DNA,
13:07
They took some of this same pickled thylacine DNA
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13:10
and they spliced it into a mouse genome,
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然后把它接到老鼠的基因组中,
13:13
but they put a tag on it
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不过他们在上面加了个标记,
13:15
so that anything that this thylacine DNA produced
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这样任何从袋狼DNA产生的东西
都会在这只老鼠宝宝身上发出蓝绿色的光。
13:19
would appear blue-green in the mouse baby.
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13:22
In other words, if thylacine tissues were being produced by the thylacine DNA,
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换句话说,如果由袋狼DNA产生出了
袋狼的组织,是能辨认出来的。
13:26
it would be able to be recognized.
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这只老鼠宝宝生出来的时候,全身到处都有蓝绿色的组织。
13:28
When the baby popped up, it was filled with blue-green tissues.
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这就说明如果我们能把袋狼的基因组拼接成功,
13:32
And that tells us if we can get that genome back together,
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13:34
get it into a live cell,
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放到个活细胞里,是能产生出袋狼的东西的。
13:36
it's going to produce thylacine stuff.
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13:39
Is this a risk?
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有没有危险呢?
13:41
You've taken the bits of one animal
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你弄来一种动物的碎片,
13:42
and you've mixed them into the cell of a different kind of an animal.
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把它们混起来放到另外一种动物的细胞里,
我们会不会弄出一个科学怪物呢?
13:46
Are we going to get a Frankenstein? Some kind of weird hybrid chimera?
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某种奇怪的杂交混合体?
13:50
And the answer is no.
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答案是不会的。
13:51
If the only nuclear DNA that goes into this hybrid cell is thylacine DNA,
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如果放到那个杂交细胞中的唯一的细胞核DNA
是袋狼DNA的话,袋獾生出来的
13:56
that's the only thing that can pop out the other end of the devil.
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也只可能是袋狼。
14:00
OK, if we can do this, could we put it back?
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好,如果我们能做到这一步,我们能把它们放回(大自然)去吗?
14:04
This is a key question for everybody.
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这是人人都关心的一个关键问题。
14:05
Does it have to stay in a laboratory, or could we put it back where it belongs?
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它只能呆在实验室里,
还是我们可以把它们放回它们原来生活的地方?
14:09
Could we put it back in the throne of the king of beasts in Tasmania,
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我们能不能把它们放回塔斯马尼亚
野兽之王的宝座,来恢复当地的生态系统?
14:13
restore that ecosystem?
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14:14
Or has Tasmania changed so much that that's no longer possible?
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还是说塔斯马尼亚岛已经改变了太多,
这已经不可能了?
我去过塔斯马尼亚,我去过那里很多
14:19
I've been to Tasmania.
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14:20
I've been to many of the areas where the thylacines were common.
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袋狼曾经经常出没的区域。
14:23
I've even spoken to people, like Peter Carter here,
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我和很多人交谈过,比如这位,彼得•卡特,
14:26
who when I spoke to him, was 90 years old,
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我和他谈话时他都90岁了,
不过1926年的时候,他和他的父亲还有兄弟
14:29
but in 1926, this man and his father and his brother
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14:32
caught thylacines.
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抓过袋狼。他们给袋狼下过套。
14:34
They trapped them.
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14:35
And when I spoke to this man, I was looking in his eyes and thinking,
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当我和他说话时,
我看着他的眼睛,心想,
14:39
"Behind those eyes is a brain that has memories of what thylacines feel like,
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这双眼睛后面的大脑里,
有关于袋狼的记忆,它们摸起来什么感觉,
14:46
what they smelled like, what they sounded like."
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它们发出什么味道,什么声音。
14:48
He led them around on a rope.
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他曾经用根绳子牵引着它们。
14:50
He has personal experiences
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他的亲身经历,
14:52
that I would give my left leg to have in my head.
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我宁愿割下我的左腿来把它换成我脑子里的记忆。
我们都希望这种事情能够成真。
14:56
We'd all love to have this sort of thing happen.
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14:58
Anyway, I asked Peter, by any chance,
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我问彼得,他能不能
15:00
could he take us back to where he caught those thylacines.
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带我们回到他曾经抓袋狼的地方。
我想知道的是当地的环境变了没有。
15:03
My interest was in whether the environment had changed.
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他想了很久。你想,
15:06
He thought hard. It was nearly 80 years before this that he'd been at this hut.
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他上次去这个小屋已经是差不多80年前了。
15:09
At any rate, he led us down this bush track,
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他领着我们走过这条灌木丛间的小路,
然后,就在他记得的那个地方,立着这个小屋,
15:12
and there, right where he remembered,
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15:14
was the hut,
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15:15
and tears came into his eyes.
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他不禁流下了热泪。
15:17
He looked at the hut. We went inside.
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他看了看小屋,我们走了进去,
15:19
There were the wooden boards on the sides of the hut
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小屋的墙边放着木板,
是他和他的父亲及兄弟晚上睡觉的地方。
15:22
where he and his father and his brother had slept at night.
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15:24
And he told me, as it all was flooding back in memories.
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当记忆如潮水一般涌现时,
他说: “我记得袋狼围着小屋转,
15:27
He said, "I remember the thylacines going around the hut
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想知道里面是什么”,
15:30
wondering what was inside,"
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15:31
and he said they made sounds like "Yip! Yip! Yip!"
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他又说,它们发出“噎,噎,噎” 的叫声。
这些都是他生活的一部分,是他记得的。
15:35
All of these are parts of his life and what he remembers.
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我要问彼得的最关键的问题就是,
15:38
And the key question for me was to ask Peter, has it changed?
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15:41
And he said no.
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那里变没变? 他说没变。
围绕他的小屋的南方山毛榉森林
15:43
The southern beech forests surrounded his hut
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还和他1926年来的时候一模一样,
15:45
just like it was when he was there in 1926.
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15:47
The grasslands were sweeping away.
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到处都是草地,
15:49
That's classic thylacine habitat.
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这是典型的袋狼居住地。
15:51
And the animals in those areas were the same that were there
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而且那些地方的动物也还和
袋狼存在的时候一样。
15:54
when the thylacine was around.
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那我们能把袋狼放回去吗?我想可以。
15:56
So could we put it back? Yes.
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15:58
Is that all we would do? And this is an interesting question.
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我们仅仅要做这些吗?这个问题就有点意思了。
有时候你可以把他们放回去,
16:02
Sometimes you might be able to put it back,
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16:04
but is that the safest way to make sure it never goes extinct again?
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但是这是不是最安全的办法,能保证它们
再也不灭绝了呢?我觉得不是。
16:07
And I don't think so.
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16:09
I think gradually, as we see species all around the world,
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我觉得渐渐地,当我们观察全世界的各种物种时会发现,
16:12
it's kind of a mantra that wildlife is increasingly not safe in the wild.
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好像有个咒语似的,野生动物在野外
变得越来越不安全。
16:16
We'd love to think it is, but we know it isn't.
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我们希望是安全的,但我们知道不是的。
16:18
We need other parallel strategies coming online.
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我们还需要别的可以同时进行的计划。
16:21
And this one interests me.
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我看上的是这个:
16:22
Some of the thylacines that were being turned in to zoos,
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有些袋狼被交到动物园,
16:25
sanctuaries, even at the museums,
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庇护所,甚至是博物馆里时,
16:27
had collar marks on the neck.
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它们脖子上有带过项圈的痕迹,
16:29
They were being kept as pets,
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说明它们曾被养做宠物。
16:31
and we know a lot of bush tales and memories
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我们知道很多传说和回忆中,
16:34
of people who had them as pets,
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就有人把袋狼当成宠物养,
而且他们说袋狼很好,很友善。
16:36
and they say they were wonderful, friendly.
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16:38
This particular one
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这头袋狼从森林中跑出来,
16:39
came in out of the forest to lick this boy
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舔舔这个男孩后就蜷身
16:42
and curled up around the fireplace to go to sleep.
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躺在壁炉边睡着了。一头野生动物啊。
16:45
A wild animal.
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16:46
And I'd like to ask the question. We need to think about this.
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我想问一个
我们必须思考的问题,
16:50
If it had not been illegal to keep these thylacines as pets then,
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如果养袋狼做宠物不曾是非法的话,
袋狼现在会绝种了吗?
16:56
would the thylacine be extinct now?
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16:58
And I'm positive it wouldn't.
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我敢肯定是不会的。
17:00
We need to think about this in today's world.
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我们必须想一想在当今的世界里,
17:03
Could it be that getting animals close to us so that we value them,
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如果我们把动物养在身边,
器重它们,也许它们就不会灭绝了?
17:07
maybe they won't go extinct?
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17:09
And this is such a critical issue for us
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这是一个至关重要的问题,
17:11
because if we don't do that,
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因为如果我们不这么做,我们就会看到
17:13
we're going to watch more of these animals plunge off the precipice.
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更多的动物掉下绝种的深渊。
17:17
As far as I'm concerned,
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对我来说,这就是
17:18
this is why we're trying to do these kinds of de-extinction projects.
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为什么我们要做这些反绝种的项目的原因。
17:22
We are trying to restore that balance of nature
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我们想要恢复被我们打乱了的
17:25
that we have upset.
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大自然的平衡。
17:27
Thank you.
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谢谢。
(掌声)
17:29
(Applause)
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