TED：癌症帶走了艾倫、李詠和金庸！但未來癌症可能將不再是人類不治之症

10月份以來，在我們深愛的地球上，有幾位幾位偉大的靈魂因為癌症離開了我們，他們是美國微軟公司創始合夥人保羅艾倫，中國知名主持人李詠和當代武俠小說作家金庸。

他們的離開也讓很多人談癌色變，因為癌症很難前期被發現,而且一旦發現後的治療過程更是讓人痛苦不堪,我們身邊幾乎人人都聽過或見過因癌症去世的人。

合成生物學家 Tal Danino 多年來一直致力研究人體細菌的運作方式，研究過程中他有了個驚人的發現和想法：我們能夠創造一個可食用的益生菌，將它「編譯」並用來發現癌細胞，然後可以通過細胞間的協作來改變癌細胞，最終達到治愈癌症的效果。我們可以預見癌症將不再是不治之症！

未來癌症可能將不再是人類不治之症

You may not realize this, but there are more bacteria in your body than stars in our entire galaxy. This fascinating universe of bacteria inside of us is an integral part of our health, and our technology is evolving so rapidly that today we can program these bacteria like we program computers.

或許你並沒有意識到，你身體里的細菌比銀河系中的星星還要多。我們體內這迷人的「細菌宇宙」是我們身體健康不可缺少的組成部分，而高科技的迅速發展允許我們像處理計算機程序一樣處理這些細菌。

Now, the diagram that you see here, I know it looks like some kind of sports play, but it is actually a blueprint of the first bacterial program I developed. And like writing software, we can printand write DNA into different algorithms and programs inside of bacteria. What this program does is produces fluorescent proteins in a rhythmic fashion and generates a small molecule that allows bacteria to communicate and synchronize,as you’re seeing in this movie.

現在，你看到的這張圖，我知道這看起來像是某種體育運動的示意圖，但實際上是我開發的第一個細菌程序。就像寫軟件代碼那樣，我們可以依據不同的算法輸出和撰寫DNA序列，並在細菌內部編寫程序。這個程序做的事情就是按照一定的節奏生產熒光蛋白，並生成一個小分子，讓細菌可以彼此聯繫，做到信息同步，正如你在這個影片里看到的。

The growing colony of bacteria that you see here is about the width of a human hair. Now, what you can’t see is that our genetic program instructs these bacteria to each produce small molecules, and these molecules travel between the thousands of individual bacteria tellingthem when to turn on and off.

這個成長中的菌落，和人類頭髮的寬度差不多大小。但你們看不到我們的基因程序如何指導這些細菌各自產生小分子，這些分子在數千個細菌個體之間遊移，告訴它們什麼時候開啟和關閉相應的功能。

And the bacteria synchronize quite well at this scale, but because the molecule that synchronizes them together can only travel so fast, in larger colonies of bacteria, this results in traveling waves between bacteria that are far away from each other, and you can see these waves going from right to left across the screen.

在這個尺度下，細菌同步表現得很好，但因為這些讓細菌同步的分子移動速度非常快，在比較大的菌落里，將導致在相距較遠的細菌個體間產生傳導波動，你可以看到這樣的波動從螢幕的右邊向左移動。

Now, our genetic program relies on anatural phenomenon called quorum sensing, in which bacteria trigger coordinated and sometimes virulent behaviors once they reach a critical density. You can observe quorum sensing in action in this movie, where a growing colony of bacteria only begins to glow once it reaches a high or critical density. Our genetic program continues producing these rhythmic patterns of fluorescent proteins as the colony grows outwards. This particular movie and experiment we call The Supernova, because it looks like an exploding star.

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我們的遺傳程序依賴於一種叫做「群體感應」的自然現象，一旦菌落達到臨界密度，細菌之間就會開始激發相互協調，有時甚至會產生致命後果的行為。在這段視頻中，你能觀察到活動中的「群體感應」現象，成長中的菌落只有在達到高密度或臨界密度的時候才會開始發光。我們的基因程序在菌落向外蔓延時，有節奏地持續製造熒光蛋白。我們稱這個特別的影片和這個實驗為「超級新星」，因為這看起來很像星星大爆炸。

Now, besides programming these beautiful patterns, I wondered, what else can we get these bacteria to do? And I decided to explore how we can program bacteria to detect and treat diseases in our bodies like cancer. One of the surprising facts about bacteria is that they can naturally grow inside of tumors. This happens because typically tumorsare areas where the immune system has no access, and so bacteria find these tumorsand use them as a safe haven to grow and thrive.

除了編譯這些美麗的圖樣外，我開始思考，我們還能讓這些細菌做些什麼？我決定探索研究要如何編程細菌去發現和治療身體內的疾病，比如癌症。細菌的一個不可思議之處在於，它們可以在腫瘤內部自然地生長。這是因為，一般的腫瘤是免疫系統涉及不到的區域，所以當細菌發現這些腫瘤時，會將腫瘤當做避風港，在其中茁壯成長。

We started using probiotic bacteria which are safe bacteria that have a health benefit, and found that when orally delivered to mice, these probiotics would selectively grow inside of liver tumors.

我們開始使用益生菌，它們安全並且對健康有益，隨後發現，當老鼠口服益生菌時，這些益生菌會選擇生長在肝臟的腫瘤里。

We realized that the most convenient way to highlight the presence of the probiotics, and hence, the presence of the tumors, was to get these bacteria to produce a signal that would be detectable in the urine, andso we specifically programmed these probiotics to make a molecule that would change the color of your urine to indicate the presence of cancer. We went onto show that this technology could sensitively and specifically detect liver cancer, one that is challenging to detect otherwise.

我們意識到最簡便的標記出益生菌，進而讓腫瘤現形的方式，是讓這些益生菌產生可以在尿液中被檢測到的信號，所以我們特別編譯了這些益生菌，讓它們產生可以改變你尿液顏色的分子，以此做到癌症的檢測。我們隨後證明了這項技術對肝癌的檢測具有高靈敏度和準確度，而肝癌很難通過其他方式檢測到。

Now, since these bacteria specifically localize to tumors, we’ve been programming them to not only detect cancer but also to treat cancer by producing the rapeutic molecules from within the tumor environment that shrink the existing tumors, and we’ve been doing this using quorum sensing programs like you saw in the previous movies.

既然知道這些細菌能準確定位腫瘤，我們又試著做到不止能檢測癌症，還能治療癌症的編譯，通過從腫瘤內部產生治療分子，讓現有的腫瘤萎縮，而我們已經在用群體感應程序來做到這一過程了，就像之前影片中看到的一樣。

Altogether, imagine in the future taking a programmed probiotic that could detect and treat cancer, or even other diseases. Our ability to program bacteria and program life opens up new horizons in cancer research, and to share this vision, I worked with artist VikMuniz to create the symbol of the universe, made entirely out of bacteria or cancer cells. Ultimately, my hope is that the beauty and purpose of this microscopic universe can inspire new and creative approaches for the future of cancer research.

想像一下，未來可以通過服用這些編譯後的細菌來檢測和治療癌症，甚至是其他疾病。我們能夠編譯細菌以及生命的能力，為癌症研究打開了新的天地，為了分享這個美好的願景，我和藝術家VikMuniz合作，創作了這個完全由細菌和癌症細胞所組成的宇宙符號。最終，我希望這個美麗的微觀世界和它的存在意義，能夠給未來的癌症研究方法帶來新的創意。

Thank you.(Applause)

謝謝。（鼓掌）

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