新模式动物是——章鱼？
At the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., there's a room filled with burbling aquariums.
在美国马萨诸塞州伍兹霍尔的海洋生物实验室里，有一个房间里摆满了咕嘟冒泡的水族箱。
A lot of them have lids weighed down with big rocks.
其中很多水族箱的盖子都有大石头压着。
"Octopuses are notorious for being able to, kind of, escape out of their enclosures," says Bret Grasse, whose official title at MBL is "manager of cephalopod operations" — cephalopods being squid, cuttlefish and octopuses.
布雷特.格拉斯说:“章鱼是出了名的能够从它们的水族箱中逃脱的动物。”他在海洋生物实验室的官方头衔是“头足类动物运营经理”——头足类动物包括鱿鱼、墨鱼和章鱼。
He's part of a team that's trying to figure out the best ways to raise these sea creatures in captivity, so that scientists can investigate their genes and learn the secrets of their strange, almost alien ways.
他是一个团队的成员，该团队正试图找出圈养这些海洋生物的最佳方式，这样科学家就可以研究它们的基因，并了解它们奇怪的、几乎可以说是外星生物般的生活方式的秘密。
For decades, much of the basic research in biology has focused on just a few, well-studied model organisms like mice, fruit flies, worms and zebrafish.
几十年来，生物学的许多基础研究都集中在少数几个研究透彻的模型生物上，比如小白鼠、果蝇、蠕虫和斑马鱼。
That's because these critters are easy to keep in the laboratory, and scientists have worked out how to routinely alter their genes, leading to all kinds of insights into behavior, diseases and possible treatments.
这是因为这些动物在实验室里很容易饲养，科学家们已经研究出如何定期改变它们的基因，从而对它们的行为、疾病和可能的治疗方法得出了各种各样的结论。
"With these organisms, you could understand what genes did by manipulating them," says Josh Rosenthal, another biologist at MBL. "And that really became an indispensable part of biology."
海洋生物实验室的另一位生物学家乔什·罗森塔尔表示:“有了这些生物体，你就可以通过操纵它们来了解基因的作用。”“这真的成为生物学不可或缺的一部分。”
But it's also meant that basic biology has ignored much of the animal kingdom, especially its more exotic denizens.
但这也意味着基础生物学忽略了动物王国的大部分居民，尤其是那些更奇异的物种。
"We're really missing out on, I would say, the diversity of biology's solutions to problems," Rosenthal notes.
罗森塔尔指出:“我认为，我们真的错过了生物界内多种解决问题的方法。”
That's why he's part of the effort to make squid and octopuses feasible to study in the lab, so researchers can start to explore their sophisticated brains and unusual behaviors.
这就是为什么他努力使乌贼和章鱼用于实验室里的研究，这样研究人员就可以开始探索它们复杂的大脑和不寻常的行为。
But it's a challenging endeavor.
但要这是一个很有挑战性的目标。
Almost all octopuses aren't social — they will attack each other — and have to be kept in separate enclosures.
几乎所有的章鱼都不合群——它们会互相攻击——所以必须被关在单独的围栏里。
What's more, cephalopods are very sensitive to the chemistry of the water that surrounds them.
更重要的是，头足类动物对周围水的化学成分非常敏感。
They also grow extremely quickly, and that means they need lots of live food to fuel that growth.
它们的生长速度也非常快，这意味着它们需要大量的活的食物来促进生长。
The MBL researchers have focused on species from around the world that are small, relatively hardy and quick to reproduce.
海洋生物实验室定语从句研究人员关注的是世界各地体型较小、相对耐寒、繁殖速度较快的物种。
The pygmy zebra octopus, for example, grows only to the size of a grape and lays numerous clutches of eggs through its life.
例如，侏儒斑马章鱼只长到葡萄大小，一生中会产下大量的卵。
"It's the only place on the planet that you can go where we are culturing a number of these species through every life stage, through successive generations, with the goal of creating a genetically tractable system," Grasse says.
格拉斯说:“我们实验室这里是地球上一个绝无仅有的地方，在这里，我们在每一个生命阶段，在连续的几代人的时间里，都在培养大量这样的物种，目的是创造一个基因上可控的系统。”
"We're going to continue to scale this program as more and more scientific communities become involved. We've already seen a great response in the two years that we've been here."
“随着越来越多的科学界参与进来，我们将继续扩大这个项目的规模。在我们来到这里的两年中，我们已经看到了巨大的反响。”
"We do a census every week," he adds, "and right now we have roughly around 3,000 cephalopods under our care."
“我们每周都给章鱼做一次数量普查，”他补充说，“现在我们大约有3000头足类动物。”
A visitor to the lab can hardly see any of the animals, though, because they like to hide.
然而，到实验室参观的人几乎看不到任何动物，因为章鱼们喜欢躲起来。
Grasse opens up one plastic container and reaches into the water to pull out a small terra cotta pot.
格拉斯打开一个塑料容器，把手伸进水里，拿出一个小小的赤陶罐。
Inside lurks a California two-spot octopus.
里面躲着一只加利福利亚两点章鱼。
"She's right down in there — you can kind of see her eyeball checking us out," Grasse says, explaining that the octopus is sitting on her eggs in this dark enclosure.
“她就在下面——你可以看到她的眼球在盯着我们看，”格拉斯说，解释说这只章鱼正坐在她的蛋上，就在这个黑暗的容器里。
She squirts some water up at him.
她还向他喷出了一些水。
This species was the first octopus to have its full genetic sequence published, a scientific feat for researchers in 2015 that helped launch this effort to turn cephalopods into a new research tool.
这个物种是第一个公布完整基因序列的章鱼，这是2015年研究人员的一项科学成就，随后开展了将头足类动物转变为一种新的研究工具的努力。
"I ended up sequencing the octopus genome because I'm interested in how you make a weird animal," says Carrie Albertin, who now works at MBL.
“我最终对章鱼基因组进行了测序，因为我对如何制造一种奇怪的动物很感兴趣，”凯丽·阿尔伯丁说，她目前在海洋生物实验室工作。
"Most of their genes have some similarity to genes that we have and other animals have. Their close relatives are clams and snails. But they seem just so otherworldly."
“它们的大多数基因与我们和其他动物的基因有一些相似之处。它们的近亲是蛤和蜗牛。但它们似乎太与众不同了。”
She notes that they are separated from us by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
她指出，它们与我们相隔了数亿年的进化过程。
"Cephalopods are this fantastic example of a completely independent evolution of large brains," Albertin says.
“头足类动物是大型大脑完全独立进化的绝佳例子，”阿尔伯特丁说。
"They have these beautiful, fantastic, elaborate brains."
“他们有美丽、奇妙、而精致的大脑。”
What's more, these animals can also change their skin color, regrow arms and move through the water using jet propulsion.
更重要的是，这些动物还可以改变他们的皮肤颜色，重新长出手臂，以及通过喷气推进在水中移动。
The genetic sequences of more cephalopods are being deciphered, with the most recent being that of the Hawaiian bobtail squid.
更多头足类动物的基因序列正在被破译，最新的是夏威夷短尾乌贼的基因序列。
"People are working on the genomes for a bunch of different cephalopods," Albertin says.
“人们正在研究一群不同头足类动物的基因组，”阿尔伯丁说。
"I think there's going to be a couple more coming out soon."
“我想很快又有几种章鱼的基因序列会出来了。”
Knowing all the genes is just a start for researchers interested in these animals.
对于对这些动物感兴趣的研究人员来说，了解所有的基因只是一个开始。
The obvious next step is trying to tinker with those genes, to see what happens if they're disrupted.
显而易见的下一步是尝试编辑这些基因，看看如果它们被干扰会发生什么。
Rosenthal's lab has been working hard to genetically alter a cephalopod, and he says that they've "arguably" done it in the past year, though he notes that "no one has published this yet and this is really work in progress."
罗森塔尔的实验室一直在努力从基因上改变头足类动物，他说，他们在过去一年里“可以说”已经做到了这一点，不过他指出，“目前还没有人发表过这方面的研究成果，这方面的工作还在进行中。”
He shows off photos of a normal Hawaiian bobtail squid and then a ghostly albino one that his lab created by disrupting a pigmentation gene.
他展示了一张普通夏威夷短尾乌贼的照片，然后是他的实验室通过破坏色素沉着基因创造出的一只幽灵般的白化乌贼。
Figuring out how to do this has been labor-intensive.
弄清楚这一点是如何形成的是一项艰巨的工作。
Research assistant Namrata Ahuja sits at a microscope, where she injects gene-editing material into tiny squid embryos over and over and over again.
研究助理娜姆拉塔·阿胡亚坐在显微镜前，一遍又一遍地把基因编辑材料注入微小的鱿鱼胚胎。
"You get embryos almost every day, and their clutch that they lay can vary anywhere from 50 to 200 eggs in one clutch," she explains.
她解释说:“你几乎每天都能获得胚胎，而它们产下的卵的数量从50个到200个不等。”
"So if you get that many in one day, for five days a week, that adds up."
“所以如果每天都能有这么多，一周收集五天，数量就会很大了。”
The scientists have had to figure out the best needles to use for these injections, and how to best support the growth of newly hatched squid. 科学家们已经找到了最好的注射针，以及如何最好地支持新孵化的鱿鱼的生长。
It's all uncharted territory.
这都是未知领域。
The ethical questions are new too.
不过也诞生了 一些新的伦理学问题。
"I think we're very, very concerned about the ethics surrounding these creatures, particularly from the standpoint that it isn't being regulated on a federal level," Rosenthal says.
罗森塔尔说:“我认为，我们非常非常担心这些动物的伦理学问题，尤其是从联邦政府没有对它们进行监管的角度来看。”
In the U.S., animal welfare rules for scientific research don't apply to animals without backbones, he says, but researchers here have nonetheless spent a lot of time thinking about humane treatment.
在美国他说，在美国，用于科学研究的动物福利规则并不适用于没有脊椎的动物，但这里的研究人员还是花了很多时间来考虑人道对待章鱼。
"We've sort of pioneered efforts to figure out what anesthesias are useful for cephalopods," says Rosenthal, and they work to make sure living conditions are stress-free.
罗森塔尔说:“我们在某种程度上率先尝试找出什么麻醉药对头足类动物有用。”他们也努力地确保章鱼的生活环境没有压力。
"We've tried to be quite preemptive on this, in putting together what I think, in the U.S., is a one-of-a-kind policy for cephalopod research here," he says.
他说:“我们在这个问题上采取了相当先发制人的态度，在我看来，在美国，这是头足类动物研究的一项独一无二的政策，”他说。
Because, even though octopuses and squid are invertebrates, they aren't as primitive as fruit flies and worms — and that is precisely why scientists want to study them.
因为，即使章鱼和鱿鱼是无脊椎动物，它们也不像果蝇和蠕虫那么原始——这正是科学家们想要研究它们的原因。
问题
文中提到了章鱼的哪些特点？
A.大脑复杂
B.善于逃跑
C.会喷水
D.不合群
留言回复正确选项，前十名朋友可以获得红包奖励哦。赶快来试试吧！
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