"So the life cycle of a red blood cell is how long in us and how long in your laboratory?"

那么红细胞的生命周期在我们体内是多长，在你的实验室里又是多长？

"In the body it's a matter of hours to make a cell, and it lasts up to 120 days. In our culture system at the moment it takes us three weeks. We're not in the same league as the body."

“在人体内细胞的生长时间是以小时计的，而存活时间长达120天。而在我们的培养系统中，目前要养成一个细胞需要花三周时间。我们和人体差得太远了。”

"Artificial blood is the Holy Grail, and an awful lot of people have tried to get to that Holy Grail."

人工血液就像是圣杯，许许多多的人都想要得到它。

"Someone's gonna seed, aren't they? I mean, that's what we hope we're doing. I mean I think people have got very close. So it's not like people have miles away. It's not like turning base metal into gold. We've got very close many times."

“总有人的努力会开花结果的，对不对？我是说，这不就是我们希望自己正在做的吗。我想人们离成功已经很近了。所以现在的情况不是我们还差十万八千里，不是要去点铅成金。很多次我们都已经很接近了。”

Today, something perfect. Blood is sublimely engineered to do its job: coursing round the body, delivering oxygen, carrying messages, transporting waste, fighting invaders. When it finally became possible to transfuse a healthy person's blood into a sick one's, it seemed almost miraculous. But since the 1940s when the era of mass-transfusion began, blood donation has been dogged by the same set of problems: safety, storage and availability - problems that science has been determined to crack through the development of artificial blood with approaches that have ranged from chemical simulation to stem cell harnessing.

今天我们要谈的是一件完美的东西。血液的工作方式真是令人赞叹：流遍全身，输送氧气，携带健康信号，运送垃圾，打退入侵者。因此当把一个健康人的血液输送到一个病人体内终于成为可能时，这看似近乎是个奇迹。但自从1940年代大规模输血的时代开启后，献血就一直为同样的问题所困扰：安全性、血液存储和可用性。人们决心通过科学研究，开发出人工血液以击破这些问题，目前的人工造血手段包括从化学模拟到干细胞调控的各种方式。

【词汇短语】

Culture [ˈkʌltʃə]

Noun. 这里不是“文化、文明”，而是培养物;培养菌;培养细胞。In science, a culture is a group of bacteria or cells which are grown, usually in a laboratory as part of an experiment.

例句：a number of tissue culture experiments. 多次组织细胞培养实验

in the same league as

与。。。同等级，同类

例句：Both efficiency and effectiveness is not in the same League. 两者间效率与效果不可同日而语。

Turn base metal into gold

Base metal是指普通金属，贱金属（如铜、锌、锡和铅等），在炼金术中，术士一般都是要把这些金属炼成金子。A base metal is a metal such as copper, zinc, tin, or lead that is not a precious metal. 文中是用其引申义。

Sublime [səˈblaim]

Adj. 崇高的;壮丽的;宏伟的;令人赞叹的 If you describe something as sublime, you mean that it has a wonderful quality that affects you deeply.

例句：the most sublimely beautiful of all living things. 所有生命中最惊艳的

Dog [dog]

Vt. 困扰;折磨;纠缠 If problems or injuries dog you, they are with you all the time.

例句：His career has been dogged by bad luck. 他在事业上一直不走运。

【背景资料】

Holy Grail

圣杯在宗教上的意义和解释有很多种，较常见的是耶稣受难前的逾越节晚餐上，耶稣遣走加略人犹大后和11个门徒所使用的一个葡萄酒杯子。耶稣曾经拿起这个杯子吩咐门徒喝下里面象征他的血的红葡萄酒，借此创立了受难纪念仪式。

很多传说相信，如果能找到这个圣杯而喝下其盛过的水就将返老还童、死而复生并且获得永生，这个传说广泛延续到很多文学、影视、游戏等作品中，许多人终其一生的最大目标就是找到这个圣杯。这也就是本文把人工血液比作圣杯的原因。

stem cell harnessing

stem cell是干细胞，是人体内最有“潜力”的细胞，在一定条件下可以分化为多种功能性细胞。胚胎干细胞通常有两种命运——或是分化为特定细胞如血细胞、神经细胞，或是保持多潜能性，即维持其多向发育潜能及在不分化状态下的对称性细胞分裂能力。文中所涉及的应该是其造血能力。

harness的意思是调控，干细胞的调控是指给出适当的因子条件，对干细胞的增殖和分化进行调控，使之向指定的方向发展。