時差N小時:移除大腸毒素分子

It's three in the morning and you're awakened out ofa deep sleep by a terrible pain in the gut. Was itsomething you ate? And then it hits you—thatburger you had the other day was a littleundercooked. And there have been several cases ofe-coli poisoning reported in your area.

凌晨3點(diǎn)，熟睡中的你突然被胃部劇烈的疼痛弄醒。是因為吃壞肚子了嗎?然后你想到昨天吃的漢堡有點(diǎn)生。這附近也報道過幾起因大腸桿菌引起中毒的事件。

If you do have e-coli toxins coursing through yourbloodstream, the symptoms can be distressing,particularly the bloody diarrhea. And, unfortunately, there's no antidote. All you can do is waitit out. But that may change. Scientists at the University of Alberta, in Canada, have engineereda molecule to seek out e-coli toxins in the blood and flush them out of the system.

如果你血液里含有大腸桿菌，你會出現(xiàn)疼痛的癥狀，尤其會出現(xiàn)帶血的腹瀉。不幸的是，沒有解藥。你能做的只有坐等情況好轉(zhuǎn)。但情況也許有變。加拿大艾伯塔大學(xué)的科學(xué)家們研制出一種分子，這種分子能搜索出血液里大腸桿菌，并將它們稀釋排出體外。

The molecule works like a kind of molecular barb: it cruises around in the blood, and when itfinds an e-coli toxin it snags the toxin and attaches it to an immune system protein. Theprotein then neutralizes the toxin. So far the molecule has been tested in mice and beenfound to be effective.

這種分子的作用類似于魚鉤：它在血液里四處巡游，一旦找到大腸桿菌，就用凸起絆住并將它粘附在免疫蛋白上。然后免疫蛋白將毒素中和掉。目前為止，這種分子已經(jīng)在老鼠身上試驗過，效果很顯著。

But because e-coli poisoning is relatively rare, it's unlikely that the molecule will be used tomanufacture a marketable drug any time soon. The research is still useful, though, because itmodels a promising way to treat a potentially wide range of bacterial infections. Forexample, the e-coli toxin is shaped similarly to the cholera toxin. So there could be a molecularsolution to treating cholera—a disease that affects millions of people around the world.

但是因為大腸桿菌中毒現(xiàn)象相對很少見，所以將這種分子大規(guī)模制成藥物推向市場，還不太可能。但是這項研究仍然有用，因為它塑造了一種有效的方式來治療各種各樣的病毒感染。例如，大腸桿菌與霍亂病毒的形狀類似。全球有數(shù)百萬人感染上霍亂病毒，因此也可以研發(fā)出相應(yīng)的分子，來治療霍亂。