The porcine kidney cells Dr Church used for his experiments had 62 PERVs embedded (嵌入，植入)in their genomes. He and his colleagues tested their molecular scissors on several lines of these cells. In the most responsive, they managed to snip out (剪掉)all 62 copies of the integration gene.

Since PERVs rely on this gene to infect human cells as well as porcine ones, deleting it should stop them jumping into human hosts. Sure enough, tests in Petri dishes (皮氏培養皿)showed that the modified pig cells did not infect human cells grown alongside them. And, despite the extensive edits made to their DNA, those pig cells seemed unharmed by the procedure.

The editing would need to be done to sex cells, or their precursors(先導細胞), if actual lines of “clean” pigs were to be bred for use as organ donors. But this is still a striking result. Not only does it demonstrate that it is possible to cleanse(清洗) animal cells of unwanted viral passengers, thus helping remove one of the big barriers to cross-species organ transplants; it also shows the power of a genetic-engineering technique that has existed for only three years. (它不僅展示了我們可以將不需要的病毒過客從動物細胞中清洗出去，從而有助于解決跨物種器官移植的大障礙;還展示了存在僅僅三年的基因工程技術的力量所在。)

Vocabulary

transplant 移植

kidney 腎

species 物種

stopgap 臨時替代物

conversely 相反地

fetus 胎兒

immune system 免疫系統

tissue 組織

swap 交換

address 解決(問題)

eliminate 消滅

millennium 千年

molecule 分子

delete 刪除

with a view to... 旨在做......

embed 嵌入

cleanse 清洗

Transplant引起的詞匯

Transplant 移植

Transfer 轉移;調動

Transparent 透明的

Transfuse 輸血

Transport　運輸

Transmit 傳遞，傳播

transcribe 抄寫;謄寫

transient 短暫的;過渡的

transcend 超越;跨越

transgress 越過;違反

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