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Science & technology
科技版块
Stent technology
支架技术
Painting with platelets
在血小板上画画
How to hide surgical implants from the immune system
如何隐藏外科植入物不被免疫系统发现
Platelets play an essential role in healing.
血小板在愈合过程中起着至关重要的作用。
These curious beasts, are cell fragments rather than complete cells -- though they are still surrounded by cell membranes.
这些不寻常的“野兽”是细胞碎片，而不是完整的细胞--尽管它们仍然被细胞膜包裹着。
Their main job, in collaboration with a protein called fibrin, is to stem the flow of blood from wounds by causing clots.
他们的主要工作是与一种名为纤维蛋白的蛋白质合作，通过产生凝块来阻止伤口的血液流动。
They also encourage the regeneration of damaged tissue.
它们还能促进受损组织的再生。
This sort of activity at wound sites might normally draw the attention of the immune system, but that does not happen because platelets carry special proteins in their membranes which render them invisible to immune surveillance.
通常情况下，伤口部位的这种活动可能会引起免疫系统的注意，但这种情况并不会发生，因为血小板膜中携带特殊的蛋白质，使它们不受免疫监控。
Now, Wang Yunbing at Sichuan University in China writes in Matter that he has developed a way to apply these membranes to medical equipment of the sort destined for installation inside the human body.
现在，中国四川大学的王云兵在《物质》(Matter)杂志中写道，他已经开发出一种方法，可以将这些膜应用于那种要安装在人体内的医疗设备上。
That may stop the immune system attacking such grafts as foreign objects.
这可能会阻止免疫系统将这些移植物当作异物来攻击。
The idea of coating equipment with platelet membranes has been around for a while.
在设备上涂上血小板膜的想法已经存在一段时间了。
Since the relevant proteins were characterised 20 years ago, they have been used on numerous occasions to disguise nanoparticles employed for drug delivery.
自20年前相关蛋白质被确定以来，它们已被多次用于掩饰进行药物输送的纳米颗粒。
That involves manipulating the surface electric charges of the nanoparticles to make them sufficiently and uniformly negative in a way which encourages the membrane to fuse with them.
这涉及到操纵纳米粒子的表面电荷，使其充分且均匀的负电荷，从而促使薄膜与它们融合。
For such small objects, this is reasonably simple.
对于如此小的物体，这是相当简单的。
But not for large ones.
但大的就不一样了。
Manipulating charge uniformly across a wide area is tricky, and no one has yet done it well enough to achieve successful fusion.
在大范围内均匀地操纵电荷是很棘手的，而且还没有人做得足够好来实现成功的结合。
Dr Wang therefore wondered if it might be possible to entice membranes to fuse to a large surface by manipulating that surface in other ways.
因此王博士想知道是否有可能通过其他方式操纵表面电荷来诱使膜融合到一个大表面上。
Besides being attracted to negative charges, platelet membranes also spread easily and defect-free over “superhydrophilic” (exceptionally water-loving) surfaces.
除了被负电荷吸引外，血小板膜也很容易在“超亲水”(特别是亲水)表面扩散，而且没有缺陷。
With this in mind, he tested a superhydrophilic material based on a substance called polydopamine, which he knew from previous work binds to a range of materials including plastics, metals and ceramics.
考虑到这一点，他测试了基于一种物质（贻贝）的聚多巴胺超亲水材料，他从之前的工作中知道，这种物质可以与塑料、金属和陶瓷等一系列材料结合。
So he gathered a team of colleagues together to fuse it to a metal stent.
因此，他召集了一组同事，将其与金属支架融合在一起。
