Rock and a Hard Place: Growing Old
① Bad news for seekers of eternal youth.
② Biologists reporting in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" this week examined an evolutionary explanation for cellular ageing, and found no way around getting old.
③ Given that natural selection's pressure is reduced after humans have procreated, it seems less likely to operate on the genetic underpinnings of all that joint-creaking and skin-wrinkling.
④ But the researchers showed mathematically that, even if natural selection against such traits were perfect, cellular competition would still cause problems associated with ageing.
⑤ If a cell acted only to maximise its utility to the whole organism, it would eventually lose out to more individually competitive cells.
⑥ If instead it maximised its own vigour, out-competing surrounding cells useful to the wider organism, that is pretty much the definition of cancer.
⑦ To solve one problem, then, is to invite the other.
⑧ Wrinkles suddenly don't seem so bad.
▍生詞好句
eternal /??t?:n(?)l/: adj. 永恒的
cellular ageing /?s?lj?l?/: 細(xì)胞老化 (此處的 ageing 等同于 aging)
no way around (doing) sth.: 無(wú)法繞過(guò)
given that: 考慮到
procreate /?pr??kr?e?t/: vi. 繁衍
operate on: 對(duì)……起作用
underpinning /??nd?p?n??/: n. 基礎(chǔ) (文中可理解為“原因”)
joint-creaking /kri:k??/: 關(guān)節(jié)咔咔作響 (關(guān)節(jié)老化)
skin-wrinkling /?r??k(?)l??/: 皮膚起皺紋 (皮膚老化)
trait /tre?t/: n. 特質(zhì)
cellular competition: 細(xì)胞的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)
maximise: vt. 把……最大化
lose out to sb.: 輸給胸墙；被取代
vigour /?v?ɡ?/: n. 活力
out-compete: vt. 贏過(guò)……；勝出
