他她話題:現代醫學 微生物造就人類(下)

Disgusting but useful

令人作嘔卻易見效

Two other areas look promising. One is more sophisticated deployment of the humble antibiotic, arguably the pharma industry's most effective invention. At the moment antibiotics are used mainly to kill infections. In the future they might have a more subtle use-to manipulate the mix of bugs within a human, so that good bugs spread at the expense of bad ones.

還有兩個領域因這一發現而前景光明。一是關於抗生素，原理簡單但效果明顯，可以說是製藥業最有效的發明。目前，抗生素主要用於治療感染。未來它將出現在更加精密的使用方式中——混合人體內不同類型微生物，以此通過消耗有害微生物來傳播有益微生物。

The other field that may be changed is genetics. Many of the diseases in which the microbiome is implicated seem to run in families. In some, such as heart disease, that is partly explained by known human genes. In a lot, though, most notably autism, the genetic link is obscure. This may be because geneticists have been looking at the wrong set of genes-the 23,000 rather than the 3m. For those 3m are still inherited. They are largely picked up from your mother during the messy process of birth. Though no clear example is yet known, it is possible that particular disease-inducing strains are being passed down the generations in this way.

另一個因此發生改變的領域是遺傳基因，許多涉及微生物羣的疾病限於家族內傳播來，個別來看，比如心臟病，目前已知的解釋部分歸於基因學。普遍來看，特別是孤獨症的基因聯繫還很模糊，這極有可能是基因學家研究對象的類別不正確——不是人體內23000個基因，而是細菌攜帶下的3百萬個。因爲這3百萬個基因一樣具有遺傳性，它們絕大多數的選擇性重組都發生在母體生育的過程中，儘管還沒有可靠的例子證實這一說法，引發癌症的基因鏈很可能以這種方式在一代一代人體內傳播。

As with all such upheavals, it is unclear where the microbiome revolution will end up. Doctors and biologists may truly come to think of people as superorganisms. Then again, they may not. What is clear, though, is that turning thinking inside out in this way is yielding new insights into seemingly intractable medical problems, and there is a good chance cures will follow. Vive la révolution!

儘管有許多變革如此動盪，卻不知微生物革命將在哪裏結束。醫生和生物學家很可能相信人類是超級有機體的說法，也有可能不加理會。但明確的一點是，裏外變革的想法的確爲許多棘手的醫學問題引入思路，使治癒的可能性也大大的提高了。革命萬歲！