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Aquaculture
水产养殖
Godzilla the rotifer
哥斯拉版轮虫
A mutagenic technique employed for plants is used on animals
一种用于植物的突变技术被用于动物身上
The world's fisheries are overexploited. One way to relieve pressure on them is to increase the yield of fish farms. And one way to do that is to improve the quality of the food fed to the livestock in those farms. Abe Tomoko, of the riken Nishina Centre for Accelerator-Based Science, in Wako, Japan, has a novel proposal for doing this. In her role as director of the centre's beam mutagenesis group, she has overseen the creation of 30 novel cultivars of crops and ornamental plants generated by the selective breeding of promising mutants created using radiation from a particle accelerator called the RI Beam Factory. This time, though, she has applied the technique to animals.
世界渔业被过度开发，能够减轻压力的一个办法是增加养鱼场的产量，其中一种方法就是提高农场牲畜饲料的质量。日本和古市理研西奈加速器科学中心的安倍知子提出了一个新的方案。作为该中心光束突变小组的主任，她监督了30个作物和观赏植物新品种的培育，这些新品种是利用RI光束工厂的粒子加速器辐射产生的有希望的突变体进行选择性育种产生的。不过，这一次，她把这项技术应用到了动物身上。
The young of farm-raised fish species such as yellowtails, halibut, bream and bluefin tuna are fed with live prey. For the smallest fry these are often rotifers, a phylum of tiny animals discovered in the late 17th century by early microscopists. In particular, farmers use a complex of 15 species known collectively as Brachionus plicatilis. The members of this complex are, in turn, divided into three groups classified by size: ss, the adults of which are 170-190 microns long; s, with adults 190-240 microns long; and L, with adults 240-320 microns long. Members of these different groups are fed to progressively larger fish larvae.
养殖的鱼类如黄尾鱼、大比目鱼、鲷鱼和蓝鳍金枪鱼会喂食活的猎物，最小的鱼苗通常会喂食轮虫，轮虫是17世纪晚期由早期显微镜学家发现的一门微小动物。农民们特别使用的是一种由15个物种组成的复合体，统称为褶皱臂尾虫。这个复合体的成员按大小依次分为三组：ss，成虫长度为170-190微米；s，成虫长度为190-240微米；L，成虫长度为240-320微米。这些不同群体的成员会被喂食给逐渐长大的鱼苗。
Above the size of L rotifers, however, farmers switch phylum and feed their charges crustaceans called brine shrimps, the smallest of which clock in at 400 microns. That leaves a size gap which fish do not like. They often develop badly at this stage of their growth, and sometimes resort to cannibalism. Dr Abe and her colleagues therefore wondered, as they describe in Bioscience, Biotechnology & Biochemistry, whether they could plug the gap between the biggest rotifers and the smallest brine shrimps in the way that new plant cultivars are created, by bombarding rotifers with carbon or argon ions spun up to high speed in the beam factory.
然而，L号轮虫再往上，农民们换了门，用一种被称为“盐水虾”的甲壳类动物喂食，最小的盐水虾长度有400微米。这就留下了一个鱼儿们不喜欢的尺寸缺口。在生长的这一阶段它们往往发育不良，有时还会以同类相食。因此安博士和她的同事们就想：正如他们在《生物科学》、《生物技术与生物化学》中描述的那样，他们是否能像培育新的植物品种那样，通过用碳离子或氩离子轰击轮虫使其在光束工厂里高速旋转，以此来填补最大的轮虫和最小的盐水虾之间的空白。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
