Happy Birthday,Double Helix

　　Flash of Insight Ignited Biological Revolution

　　【参考译文】生日快乐，双螺旋─引发生物学革命的顿悟

　　【注释】flash of insight,“突然领悟”.又，a sudden flash of inspiration/wit,灵感/机智的闪现。Ignite,点燃，引发，这里是比喻用法。

　　Fifty years ago this month, on a foggy Saturday morning in Cambridge, England, a 24-year-old beanpole of an American scientist (Watson) sat down with a few white cardboard cutouts and set off a revolution in biology.

　　【参考译文】五十年前的二月，在英国剑桥大学星期六一个雾蒙蒙的早晨，一位24岁清瘦高挑的美国科学家坐在一堆裁剪出的纸板块旁，他由此引发了一场生物学领域的革命。

　　【注释】beanpole,“非常高且瘦的人”。这里的of表示同位关系，即前后是同一个人。Set off,“引起,导致”,同前面的ignite意思相近，如：The court's initial verdict in the police officers' trial set off serious riots.法庭对这名警官的初审判决引起了严重的骚乱。

　　The DNA molecule is a double helix, resembling a ladder that's been twisted along its length. Each "rung" is made up of two bases, paired according to the rule that jumped out at Watson from his desktop. These bases provide the genetic code; just as a four-letter alphabet could spell out words, the sequence of the four kinds of bases along the length of the DNA molecule spells out the information stored in genes.

　　【参考译文】DNA(脱氧核糖核酸)的分子是一种双螺旋结构，酷似一架沿纵向扭曲的梯子。每个“横档”由两个碱基组成，它们搭配的原则是华生在书桌旁突然想到的。这些碱基的组合便构成了基因代码。正如一个四个字母组成的字母表可以拼写出单词一样，这些沿DNA分子伸展方向由四种不同碱基排成的序列清楚地表达了基因所贮存的遗传信息。

　　【注释】along its length,“沿着它延伸的方向”。Jump out at Watson,拟人的说法，可以翻译为“突然想出”。Spell out,“to make perfectly clear and understandable,使十分清楚明白”：The government has so far refused to spell out its policies.政府到目前为止拒绝解释其政策。

　　The finding unleashed a torrent of researchsintosDNA that's still going on, both to understand how it works and to put it to use. Many of today's scientific headlines—the deciphering of the DNA of humans and other species, the transplanting of genessintosanimals and crops to change their traits, the use of gene therapy to treat disease, the DNA evidence that exonerates people imprisoned unjustly—ultimately came from the double helix discovery.

　　【参考译文】这一发现导致了大量有关DNA的、目前仍在进行的研究，这些研究致力于理解DNA的活动机理以及如何应用对它的认识。许多今日科学界的热门话题，诸如人类和其他物种的DNA密码破解，将基因移植到动物或植物体内以改变其生物特征，应用基因疗法治疗疾病以及依靠DNA证据使被错误监禁的人恢复清白，都最终源自双螺旋分子结构的发现。

　　【注释】unleash,“释放，发动”，和前面的ignite, set off意思接近。Decipher,“解读，破译”，其近义词有decode, break, crack, cryptanalyze, decrypt等，它的反义词是cipher,“将…写成密码”。Exonerate,“免除(对某人的)责备，决定(某人)无罪”：The report on the accident exonerates the company from any responsibility.这次事故的报告确定该公司无须负任何责任。

　　The DNA story is far from over. Scientists are still working out the details of how DNA is replicated so quickly and accurately—an astonishing feat, since each human cell contains billions of base pairs lined up along nearly six feet of DNA, all packedsintosa nucleus only one-twentieth the width of a human hair.

　　【参考译文】DNA的故事远未结束。科学家们还在努力查明DNA快速精确复制的奥秘。DNA的复制是一项惊人的活动，之所以这么说，是因为每个人体细胞内有数十亿的碱基对排列在近六英尺长的DNA分子上，而所有这些物质都紧密分布在只有人类头发二十分之一宽度的细胞核中。

　　【注释】feat,“业绩，功绩”：a remarkable feat of engineering,一项了不起的工程业绩。Line up,“排列，派布”，还表示“组织，准备好”，如：We've lined up Pavarotti for the main role in the opera.我们邀请了帕瓦罗蒂在歌剧中担任主角。又lineup,阵容，阵形：a candidate with an impressive lineup of endorsements，一位具有大量支持者的候选人。

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