雅思阅读原文翻译-保护昆虫以发现新药品

　　在雅思阅读备考中考生要注意多做练习，今天小编为大家分享的是雅思阅读原文翻译-保护昆虫以发现新药品，关于这篇文章是以往的考试真题，大家可以多积累一些生物方面的背景知识，因为在考试中经常会见到这类题材的文章。

　　Saving bugs to find new drugs

　　保护昆虫以发现新药品

　　Zoologist Ross Piper looks at the potential of insects in pharmaceutical research

　　动物学家Ross Piper探寻昆虫在制药研究中的潜在价值

　　A More drugs than you might think are derived from, or inspired by, compounds found in living things. Looking to nature for the soothing and curing of our ailments is nothing new - we have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You only have to look at other primates - such as the capuchin monkeys who rub themselves with toxin-oozing millipedes to deter mosquitoes, or the chimpanzees who use noxious forest plants to rid themselves of intestinal parasites - to realise that our ancient ancestors too probably had a basic grasp of medicine.

　　A 提取自生物中的化合物或受到生物中化合物的启发制成的药品，要比人们想象中的更多。在自然界中寻找用来减轻和治愈疾病的营养物并不是新鲜事——我们已经这么做了成千上万年。你只需要了解一下其他灵长类动物——比如卷尾猴用带有毒素的千足虫驱除蚊子，黑猩猩使用有毒的森林植物摆脱肠内寄生虫——就会意识到或许我们的祖先也掌握一些基本的医药知识。

　　B Pharmaceutical science and chemistry built on these ancient foundations and perfected the extraction, characterisation, modification and testing of these natural products. Then, for a while, modern pharmaceutical science moved its focus away from nature and into the laboratory, designing chemical compounds from scratch. The main cause of this shift is that although there are plenty of promising chemical compounds in nature, finding them is far from easy. Securing sufficient numbers of the organism in question, isolating and characterising the compounds of interest, and producing large quantities of these compounds are all significant hurdles.

　　B 药物科学和化学就建立在这些古代的基础之上，并完善了对这些自然界产物的提取、鉴定、改良和检验。在之后的一段时期内，现代药物科学将关注重点从大自然转移到了实验室中，从头开始设计化合物。这一转变的主要原因是尽管自然界中有许多有使用前景的化合物，找到它们却并非易事。获得大量尚在讨论中的微生物，分离并鉴定人们关注的化合物，对这些化合物进行大规模生产都有巨大的困难。

　　C Laboratory-based drug discovery has achieved varying levels of success, something which has now prompted the development of new approaches focusing once again on natural products. With the ability to mine genomes for useful compounds, it is now evident that we have barely scratched the surface of nature’s molecular diversity. This realisation, together with several looming health crises, such as antibiotic resistance, has put bioprospecting - the search for useful compounds in nature - firmly back on the map.

　　C 基于实验室的药物发现取得了不同程度的成功，这促使新研究方法的发展再一次聚焦自然界的产物。通过获取有用化合物基因组的能力，很明显目前我们对自然界的分子多样性仅仅进行了浅层的研究。意识到这一点，加之一些潜在的健康危机如抗生素耐药性，使生物勘探技术，也就是在自然界中寻找有用的化合物，回到了人们关注的视野里。

　　D Insects are the undisputed masters of the terrestrial domain, where they occupy every possible niche. Consequently, they have a bewildering array of interactions with other organisms, something which has driven the evolution of an enormous range of very interesting compounds for defensive and offensive purposes. Their remarkable diversity exceeds that of every other group of animals on the planet combined. Yet even though insects are far and away the most diverse animals in existence, their potential as sources of therapeutic compounds is yet to be realised.

　　D 昆虫毫无疑问是陆地上的主导者，它们占据着每一处可能的地方。因此，它们与其他生物体有复杂的互动方式，这促进了一系列以防卫和进攻为目的的化合物的进化。它们显著的多样性超过了地球上其他所有动物类型的总和。然而即使昆虫是现存最具多样性的物种，他们作为治疗型化合物的潜力仍有待研究。

　　E From the tiny proportion of insects that have been investigated, several promising compounds have been identified. For example, alloferon, an antimicrobial compound produced by blow fly larvae, is used as an antiviral and antitumor agent in South Korea and Russia. The larvae of a few other insect species are being investigated for the potent antimicrobial compounds they produce. Meanwhile, a compound from the venom of the wasp Polybia paulista has potential in cancer treatment.

　　E 通过被研究的少部分昆虫，人们已经确认了一些有前景的化合物。比如，alloferon，一种丽蝇幼虫产生的抗菌剂，在韩国和俄罗斯被作为一种抗病毒剂和抗癌剂。同时，人们还在研究其他一些昆虫物种的幼虫，以了解它们产生的有效抗菌物质。同时，黄蜂毒液中的化合物Polybia paulista在癌症治疗方面也有潜在效用。

　　F Why is it that insects have received relatively little attention in bioprospecting? Firstly, there are so many insects that, without some manner of targeted approach, investigating this huge variety of species is a daunting task. Secondly, insects are generally very small, and the glands inside them that secrete potentially useful compounds are smaller still. This can make it difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of the compound for subsequent testing. Thirdly, although we consider insects to be everywhere, the reality of this ubiquity is vast numbers of a few extremely common species. Many insect species are infrequently encountered and very difficult to rear in captivity, which, again, can leave us with insufficient material to work with.

　　F 为什么相对而言昆虫在生物勘探中几乎没有受到关注?首先，昆虫数量如此之多，以至于在没有某种标靶方法的情况下，研究如此多样的物种是一项艰巨的任务。第二，昆虫通常体型很小，而含有潜在有用化合物的腺体就更小了，这就使为之后的研究获取足够化合物变得很困难。第三，尽管我们认为昆虫无处不在，但现实情况是一些非常普遍的物种数量巨大。许多昆虫物种并不常见，并且在圈养状态下很难培养，这再一次使我们在研究时缺乏足够的材料。

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　　以上是小编为大家分享的雅思阅读原文翻译-保护昆虫以发现新药品，阅读水平的提升不是一朝一夕就能实现的，需要我们长期坚持有效的练习才能做到，所以各位考生一定要注意多多练习，帮助我们提升阅读水平。