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進入《中英對照讀新聞》Spermless mosquitoes hold promise to stop malaria 無精子的蚊子可望遏阻瘧疾
◎國際新聞中心
Scientists have created spermless mosquitoes in an effort to curb the spread of malaria. Experts say that this is an important first step toward releasing sterile males into the wild to reduce the size of mosquito populations.
科學家已創造出無精子的蚊子，努力遏阻瘧疾蔓延。專家說，這是野放無生育能力的雄蚊、降低蚊群數量重要的第一步。
Malaria kills around one million people worldwide every year, and in Africa alone, accounts for 20% of all childhood deaths. Insect sterilisation isn’t new：scientists have attempted to control the sleeping sickness-carrying tsetse fly by exposing them to radiation to render them sterile.
瘧疾每年造成全球100萬人死亡，光是在非洲，兒童死亡原因2成是瘧疾造成。昆蟲絕育並非新鮮事：科學家嘗試過將傳播昏睡病的采采蠅暴露在輻射線下讓牠們無生育能力，藉此控制牠們。
However, exposing mosquitoes to radiation has tended to leave male mosquitoes frail. Now scientists have developed an alternative route to mosquito sterility. Entomologist Flaminia Catteruccia from Imperial College London enlisted the help of her graduate student Janis Thailayil in the search for how to make male mosquitoes sterile but leave them otherwise unharmed.
但是讓蚊子接觸輻射線會讓雄蚊虛弱。現在科學家研發出讓蚊子絕育的替代方式，倫敦帝國學院的昆蟲學家卡特路西亞找來研究生泰拉以爾幫忙，尋找讓雄蚊無生育能力，卻又不會傷害牠們的方法。
Mr Thailayil injected 10,000 mosquito embryos with tiny fragments of RNA designed to turn off a gene - called zpg - that is essential for normal sperm development. After months of laborious work, the researchers created around 100 spermless mosquitoes, and showed that females were just as willing to mate with these males as with fertile ones.
泰拉以爾將1萬個蚊子胚胎植入RNA（核醣核酸）的微小片段中，關閉對正常精子發育至關重要的zpg基因，經過數月費力的研究，研究人員創造出約100隻無精子蚊，而且母蚊與牠們交配的意願、與和有生育能力的蚊子一樣高。
新聞辭典
sterilisation：名詞，結紮。例句：My wife and I have discussed sterilisation, but we haven’t made a decision about it yet.（我太太跟我討論過結紮，但還沒有決定。）
laborious：形容詞，費力地，副詞為laboriously。例句：He wrote out the list laboriously by hand.（他很費力地手寫出這份清單。）
mate：動詞，交配。例句：Mating a horse with a donkey produces a mule.（馬跟驢子交配會生出騾子。）
