墨尔本PTE素材库——Bats Beat Ebola with Hypervigilant Immunity

墨尔本PTE素材库——Bats Beat Ebola with Hypervigilant Immunity

中文批注

这段音频的主要内容，是关于Bats beat Ebola的研究。埃博拉是前段时间在非洲地区特别特别“猖狂”的一个流行病，曾经谈埃博拉色变。那么这段音频，主要是讲述了为什么对于蝙蝠来说，他们可以在体内携带埃博拉病毒，但是却没有生病甚至倒下呢？

这段音频中的生词不少，大都是一些与医学相关的词汇。如果是学医的同学们，应该不会有任何的理解问题哦！但如果是一位PTE目标为65+或者79+的学生，如果有一些专业的词汇较弱，但是对于音频的整体理解还是不应该有过多的问题哦！不然，你的词汇量就真的要恶补一下啦！

澳大利亚语言学院会定期整理一些PTE的素材库，让各位PTE的考生，能够在平时练习的时候就能接触到一些和official questions criteria相近的话题素材，不但能够锻炼PTE考生的听力和复述的能力，也能在消化每篇素材的过程中提高自己的阅读能力以及词汇量。例如这篇关于Bats和Ebola的文章，大家可以试着re-tell这段音频你内容，并回答以下几个问题：

其他哺乳动物，是如何抵抗感染的？

为什么那些动物，不会有感染的症状？

为什么人类不能和文中提到的那些动物一样抵抗病毒？

【Key Vocabulary】

Immune system:  免疫系统

Invade: 侵略

Interferon: 干扰素

Downstream: 下游的，顺流而下的

Stimulate: 刺激，激发

Pathogen: 病原体

Comparative: 相当的，比较的

Immunologist: 免疫学家

Sequence: Vt. 按顺序排好

Patrol: 巡逻

Constant: 不变的，恒定的

Inflammation: 发炎

Cell: 细胞

Skew: 歪斜，偏离

Antiviral: 抗病毒的

Novel: 新奇的，异常的

Therapeutic: 治疗的，有益于健康的。

Full Transcript

The immune systems in bats are in a continuous state of activation, which may explain why they can carry viruses like Ebola without harm. Christopher Intagliata reports.

When a virus invades your cells, it kicks your immune machinery into motion. The first responders are signaling proteins, called interferons. “And they trigger downstream immune responses. So you can kind of think of them as the hormones of the immune system. They’re triggered and then they stimulate a bunch of other immune responses that are more specific to that pathogen.” Michelle Baker, a comparative immunologist at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory.

In the spirit of comparative immunology, Baker and her colleagues looked at how another mammal—the black flying fox, a type of bat—handles infections. They sequenced its immunity genes, and observed the immune response in normal bat cells. And they found that, unlike us—the bats always have interferons on patrol. Meaning the proteins do not wait to be activated by invaders. And the researchers say that this constant state of high alert may be why bats can carry Ebola, Nipah virus, and a whole lot of other infections with no symptoms at all. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Peng Zhou et al, Contraction of the type I IFN locus and unusual constitutive expression of IFN-α in bats]

So why not switch on those interferons 24/7 in humans? Well in us, they also tend to cause lots of inflammation and cell damage. Like the symptoms you feel from the flu—a lot of that is your immune system’s fault. But the key might be to do as the bats do. “If we can just skew the response of our immune system so it triggers an antiviral response without the pro-inflammatory effects, then we might have something we can work with in terms of a novel therapeutic for humans.” Bats have long been known to harbor disease. So it would be fitting if they also taught us how to fight it.

—Christopher Intagliata

(Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/bats-beat-ebola-with-hypervigilant-immunity/ )