搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号:tingroom,领取免费英语资料大礼包。
(单词翻译)
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.
Mark Twain called it "the most delicious fruit known to men." He was talking about the cherimoya. If you never heard of it, there's good reason. It has a feature that has prevented it from becoming widely popular—numerous big seeds fill its sweet white flesh.
But now scientists in Spain and at the University of California, Davis have found the key to making the cherimoya and related fruits seedless. They published their research in the Proceedings1 of the National Academy of Sciences.
It's generally tough to develop a seedless fruit—bananas and oranges are rare successes. Breeding for seedlessness usually fails to produce the fully3 developed fruit consumers demand. But the scientists found a spontaneous mutation4 that causes seedlessness in a cherimoya relative, the sugar apple. They compared its genome to that of a seedless mutant of a plant called Arabidopsis that's used in a lot of research.
In both cases, they found a deletion of one particular gene2. The researchers say this is the first time a gene for seedlessness has been determined5. If they can find a way to knock out that gene in the cherimoya, it could bring Mark Twain's favorite fruit, and many others, to a grocery store near you.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber.
1 proceedings | |
n.进程,过程,议程;诉讼(程序);公报 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 gene | |
n.遗传因子,基因 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 mutation | |
n.变化,变异,转变 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
本文本内容来源于互联网抓取和网友提交,仅供参考,部分栏目没有内容,如果您有更合适的内容,欢迎 点击提交 分享给大家。