鼠狐猴可能比小白鼠更适合“当小白鼠”(中)

Yet, like mice, mouse lemurs breed prolifically and quickly, with a gestation period of just two months and maturity achieved within six to eight months.

然而，和老鼠一样，鼠狐猴繁殖迅速，妊娠期只有两个月，成熟期为6到8个月。

And not just in a laboratory.

而且不仅仅是在实验室里。

In Madagascar there are millions of them—for, contrary to common perception, not all lemur species are endangered.

马达加斯加有数以百万计的狐猴，与人们的认知不太一样，并不是所有的狐猴物种都濒临灭绝。

What is particularly intriguing for Dr Krasnow and his colleagues, though, is that, in captivity at least, mouse lemurs suffer several illnesses which affect humans too.

然而，克拉斯诺博士和他的同事们特别感兴趣的是，即使在圈养中，鼠狐猴也会患上几种同样会影响人类的疾病。

These include Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders, cardiac arrhythmias, metastatic uterine cancer, strokes and atherosclerosis, the furring of the arteries that can lead to a heart attack.

这些疾病包括阿尔茨海默症和其他神经退行性疾病、心律失常、转移性子宫癌、中风和动脉粥样硬化等，动脉淤积还可能引发心脏类的疾病。

Model organisms tend to happen by accident.

模型生物往往是偶然产生的。

Yeast is used by brewers and bakers, so is an obvious topic for study.

酵母是啤酒酿造商和面包师使用的，因此是一个显而易见的研究课题。

Fruit flies were picked by Thomas Morgan, an early geneticist, because they are easy to breed in large numbers—and it helped that some of their cells have giant chromosomes which showed up well under the microscopes of the day.

果蝇是由早期的遗传学家托马斯·摩根挑选的，因为它们很容易大量繁殖，而且它们的一些细胞有巨大的染色体，在显微镜下很容易看到。

And mice were kept as pets by fanciers long before one saw the inside of a laboratory cage.

早在人们看到老鼠被关进实验室笼子之前，老鼠就被一些爱好者当作宠物饲养了。

Dr Krasnow's plan to add mouse lemurs to the list was slightly less accidental than these.

克拉斯诺博士将鼠狐猴添加到名单中的计划与这些计划相比，不那么偶然。

It began in 2009, when he charged his daughter Maya, then still at school, and two of her friends to come up with a new model organism for studying primates as a summer project in his laboratory.

这件事始于2009年，当时他要求当时还在上学的女儿玛雅和她的两个朋友想出一种新的有机体模型，作为他实验室的夏季项目，用于研究灵长类动物。

After reviewing the gamut of the primate order, which contains about 500 species, and also looking at a few outliers such as tree shrews, Krasnow junior and her two compadres settled on mouse lemurs.

在考虑了大概500个灵长类动物，并观察了一些离群点，如树懒之后，小克拉斯诺和她的两个同伴选择了鼠狐猴。

Not only are these abundant and fast-breeding, they also do well in captivity, as a 60-year-old colony of them in France testifies.

它们不仅数量众多、繁殖迅速，而且在圈养条件下也很好，这是它们在法国长达60年的殖民地生活的证明。

Not one to ignore his daughter's advice, Dr Krasnow investigated in more detail.

克拉斯诺博士没有忽视女儿的建议，他对此进行了更详细的调查。

In 2011, he organised a workshop of lemur biologists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Virginia, to kick the idea around.

2011年，他在弗吉尼亚州霍华德·休斯医学院组织了一次狐猴生物学家研讨会，探讨这一想法。

It found favour, and in particular it accelerated the completion of a genome-sequencing project for the animals—a sine qua non for any self-respecting model organism.

这一想法得到了青睐，尤其是会加速动物基因组测序项目的完成，这是任何靠谱的模式生物的必要条件。

It also introduced Dr Krasnow to the idea that fieldwork might be an important part of his proposal.

也让克拉斯诺博士意识到，田野调查可能是他提案的重要组成部分。

That, in some ways, is the most intriguing idea of the lot.

在某种程度上，这是最有趣的想法。

Most biologists working with model organisms make a fetish of control.

大多数从事模式生物研究的生物学家都有一种对控制的迷恋。

Mice, in particular, are often bred deliberately to be as genetically similar to one another as possible, within a given line.

特别是老鼠，在特定的品系中，经常被有意地培养成基因上尽可能相似的同类。

Dr Krasnow has the opposite plan.

克拉斯诺博士的计划正好相反。

Genetic analysis is now so cheap that every animal involved in a project can be sequenced.

现在基因分析价格低廉，所以参与项目的每一只动物都可以被测序。

Made visible in this way, diversity is as much an opportunity as a problem, for that information can be correlated not only with obvious, medically relevant stuff, such as disease manifestation, but also with behaviour—and behaviour expressed in the wild, not just in the restricted environment of a laboratory.

通过这种方式，多样性既是一个问题，也是一个机会，因为这些信息不仅可以与明显的医学上相关的东西相关，比如疾病的表现，还可以与行为以及在野外表达的行为相关联，而不仅仅是在受限的实验室环境中。

That insight led to collaboration with Patricia Wright, a primatologist at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, who helped encourage the Malagasy government to found Ranomafana, and who has been working there for decades.

这种洞察力促成了与纽约州立大学石溪分校灵长类动物学家帕特里夏·赖特的合作，后者帮助鼓励马达加斯加政府成立了拉诺马法纳，并在那里工作了数十年。

And that led to the lemur-trapping project now joined by Judah.

这导致了诱捕狐猴的项目，也就是犹大加入的这个项目。

One early discovery from the genetic analyses made possible by this project (admittedly, one that is not of much obvious medical use) is that what appeared to be one species of brown mouse lemur, the species Dr Krasnow and Dr Wright thought they were investigating, is actually two.

这个项目使得遗传分析的一个早期发现成为可能，（诚然，这是一种在医学用途不是很明显的物种），表面上看起来是一种棕色鼠狐猴，克拉斯诺博士和赖特博士认为他们正在研究的物种，实际上是两种。

They live in the same range and are indistinguishable to the human eye.

它们生活在同一范围内，肉眼难以分辨。

But they can clearly tell each other apart because their genetics show that they diverged several million years ago, and do not interbreed.

但它们可以清楚地区分彼此，因为它们的基因表明，它们在几百万年前就已经分化，而且没有杂交。