西班牙科學家利用皮膚細胞成功培育出人類精子
Scientists in Spain on last Wednesday they had created human sperm from skin cells, a medical feat which could eventually lead to a treatment for infertility.
上週三，來自西班牙的一隊科學家宣佈，他們成功地用皮膚細胞培育出了人類精子，並且這項醫學成就最終能夠用於治療不育症。The researchers said they were working to find a solution for the roughly 15 percent of couples worldwide who are unable to have children and whose only option is to use donated sperm or eggs.
研究人員表示，世界上大概有15%的夫婦無法生育，只能依靠捐贈精子或卵子來生育，而他們也一直爲解決這些夫婦的問題而做出努力。"What to do when someone who wants to have a child lacks gametes (eggs or sperm)?" asked Carlos Simon, the scientific director of the Valencian Infertility Institute. "This is the problem we want to address: to be able to create gametes in people who do not have them."
西班牙瓦倫西亞不孕不育中心的科學主管卡洛斯·西蒙發問道：“當無法產生配子（精子或卵子）的人們想生育後代時，他們該怎麼辦呢？這是我們想要解決的難題——我們希望能夠幫助人們製造配子。”
The result of their research, which was carried out with Stanford University in the United States, was published last Tuesday in Scientific Reports, the online journal of Nature.
他們和美國斯坦福大學就該研究進行了合作，而研究成果在上週二於《自然》的在線雜誌《科學報告》出版。Simon and his team managed to reprogramme mature skin cells by introducing a cocktail of genes needed to create gametes. Within a month the skin cell was transformed to become a germ cell, which can develop into sperm or an egg, but it did not have the ability to fertilise, they found.
通過加入一系列製造配子所需的基因，西蒙和他的同事們成功地對皮膚細胞進行了重新編碼。他們發現，在不到一個月的時間後，皮膚細胞轉換成了一個生殖細胞。該生殖細胞能夠分化成精子或卵子。但是它無法受精。"This is a sperm but it needs a further maturation phase to become a gamete. This is just the beginning," Simon said. "With the human species we must do much more testing because we are talking about the birth of child."
西蒙說：“這個精子需要更多的成熟期來最終成爲配子。這僅僅是個開始。鑑於我們在探討一個孩子的誕生，我們應該做大量的測試工作。”The researchers also must take into account legal constraints since the technique involves the creation of artificial embryos which right now is only allowed in some countries.
研究人員們還需要考慮法律上的限制，因爲這種技術涉及到創造人工胚胎，而人工胚胎只在一些國家得到了許可。
