From The Gene Page 234:
It is the impulse of science to try to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it. Recombinant DNA had pushed genetics from the realm of sciece into the realm of technology. Genes were not abstractions anymore. They could be liberated from the genomes of organisms where they had been trapped for millennia, shuttled between species, amplified, purified, extended, shortened, altered, remixed, mutated, mixed, matched, cut, pasted, edited; they were infintely malleable to human intervention. Genes were no longer just the subjects of study, but the instruments of study. There is an illuminated moment in the development of a child when she grasps the recursiveness of language: just as thoughts can be used to generate words, she realizes, words can be used to generate thoughts. Recombinant DNA had made the language of genetics recursive. Biologists had spent decades trying to interrogate the nature of the gene -- but now it was the gene that could be used to interrogate biology. We had graduated, in short, from thinking about genes, to thinking in genes.
翻译：
科学的出发点是了解自然，而科技的出发点是掌控自然。重组DNA的实现，使遗传学从一门科学变成了一项科技。基因已经不再是抽象概念，不再只是千万年来禁锢在基因组中的一部分，相反，基因已经能从基因组中提取出来，在物种间转移，并进行复制、提纯、扩充、缩减、修改、重排、变异、混合、配对、剪切、贴合、编辑。在人类手上，它们呈现出无限可能。至此，基因已经不只是研究的课题，而变成了研究的工具。就好像小孩在长大的过程中会恍然大悟，明白语言是双向的，即思想可以产生话语，而话语也能产生思想。重组DNA技术的出现，让遗传学的语言（基因）也变成了双向的。生物学家耗时几十年，想要探寻基因的本质--而现在可以利用基因反过来探寻生物学本质。简言之，我们已经迈上新起点，基因从“问题”变成了“思路”。
From The Gene Page 244:
It was an inverted fable: an academic Goliath versus a pharmaceutical David, one lumbering, powerful, handicapped by size, the other nimble, quick, adept at dancing around rules.
翻译：
这简直就是巨人和羊倌故事的翻版嘛：学术界的巨人单挑制药界小个子，一个孔武有力，五大三粗，可是反应迟钝，另一个机敏灵活，凌波微步，而且擅长使巧劲儿。
网友评论