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The intricate work of modifying cells in a laboratory may become easier " and more affordable " thanks to technology developed by a research team in China.

中国研究团队研发的这项技术可能会让编辑细胞这样的复杂工作变得更容易、成本更低。

According to a paper published in the scientific journal Small, the team at the State Key Laboratory of Robotics in Shenyang, in the northeast province of Liaoning, has effectively turned a gas bubble in water into a robot which can operate on the tiniest scale with unprecedented accuracy.

根据《Small》科学杂志上发表的一篇论文,这支位于辽宁省沈阳国家机器人重点实验室的团队,有效地把一个水中的汽泡变成了一个机器人,可以以精确度史无前例的最小的尺度操作

The team, led by Dai Liquo, created the bubble bot with a precisely controlled laser beam. The bubble, just a few micrometers wide, was able to perform a wide range of tasks in a water-rich environment, such as fabricating artificial tissue over a test tray or modifying an embryo.

该团队精确控制的激光束创造了这种气泡机器人。这种气泡的宽度只有几微米,可以在富水环境中执行多种任务,例如在实验托盘上制造人工组织或编辑胚胎。

"The micro-bubble robot ... can be useful for tissue transplants, regenerative medicine, and biological research," the researchers said in the paper.

研究人员在论文里表示:“这种微型气泡机器人……在组织移植、再生医疗和生物研究上很有用。”

The development aims to address the challenge of handling extremely small obxts in the laboratory, which is usually accomplished with a needle, handled by technicians with years of training, working for long hours under a microscope.

这项研究的目的是解决在实验中处理极小物质时面临的挑战,通常这种操作是由经过多年训练的技术员用针在显微镜下工作很多个小时来完成的。

Even in the most experienced hands, samples are often damaged in the process. The lack of efficient tools is one of the reasons growing artificial tissue and cloning remains slow, expensive and prone to failure. Typically, fewer than 10 per cent of cloned organisms survive.

即使是最有经验的技术员也经常会在操作过程中把样本弄坏。培养人工组织和克隆之所以效率低下又昂贵,且容易失败,其中一个原因就是缺乏有效工具。一般来说,能够成活的克隆组织不到10%。