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But the real hope is that this goes beyond a single species of bacteria that can eat a single kind of plastic.
但真正的希望在于，这不仅仅是发现了一种可以摄食某种塑料的细菌。
Over the past half-century, microbiology – the study of small organisms including bacteria and some fungi – has undergone a revolution that Jo Handelsman, former president of the American Society for Microbiology, and a science adviser to the Obama White House, described to me as possibly the most significant biological advance since Darwin’s discovery of evolution.
在过去的半个世纪里，微生物学——研究包括细菌和一些真菌在内的小生物体的学科——经历了一场革命，美国微生物学会前主席、奥巴马执政期间的科学顾问乔·汉德尔斯曼将其描述为自达尔文发现进化论以来最重要的生物学进步。
We now know that micro-organisms constitute a vast, hidden world entwined with our own.
我们现在知道，微生物构成了一个庞大的隐藏世界，与我们所处的世界交织在一起。
We are only beginning to grasp their variety, and their often incredible powers.
我们才刚刚开始了解塑料微生物的多样性，以及它们常常令人难以置信的力量。
Many scientists have come around to Oda’s view – that for the host of seemingly intractable problems we are working on, microbes may have already begun to find a solution.
许多科学家已经接受了小田教授的观点——对于我们正在研究的许多看似棘手的问题，微生物可能已经展示出了解决方案。
All we need to do is look.
我们需要做的就是去研究它们。
A discovery like Oda’s is only a starting point.
像小田教授这样的发现只是一个起点。
To have any hope of mitigating this globe-spanning environmental disaster of our own making, the bacteria will have to work faster and better.
如果对减轻这场由我们自己造成的全球性的环境灾难抱有希望，那就需要通过细菌来更快、更好地发挥作用。
When Oda and his group originally tested the bacteria in the lab, they placed them in a tube with a 2cm-long piece of plastic film weighing a 20th of a gram.
当小田教授的团队最初在实验室测试这种细菌时，他们将其放置在一个含有 2 厘米长、重 0.05 克的塑料薄膜的试管中。
Left at room temperature, they broke down the tiny bit of plastic into its precursor liquids in about seven weeks.
在室温下，这种细菌花了约七周的时间将这一小块塑料分解成前体物质。
This was very impressive and far too slow to have any meaningful impact on plastic waste at scale.
这一结果非常令人印象深刻，但细菌分解速度太慢，无法对大规模的废塑料产生任何有意义的影响。
Fortunately, over the past four decades, scientists have become remarkably proficient at engineering and manipulating enzymes.
幸运的是，在过去的四十年里，科学家们在工程酶和操控酶方面已经非常精通。
When it comes to plastic chewing, “the Ideonella enzyme is actually very early in its evolutionary development”, says Andy Pickford, a professor of molecular biophysics at the University of Portsmouth.
朴茨茅斯大学分子生物物理学教授安迪·皮克福德表示，谈到摄食塑料方面，“与大阪堺菌有关的酶实际上还处于进化发展的早期阶段”。
It is the goal of human scientists to take it the rest of the way.
人类科学家的目标是走完剩下的路。
When any living organism wishes to break down a larger compound – whether a string of DNA, or a complex sugar, or plastic – they turn to enzymes, tiny molecular machines within a cell, specialised for that task.
当任何生物体想要分解一个更大的化合物时，无论是DNA链，复杂的糖分子，还是塑料，它们都会诉诸于专门负责这项任务的酶(一种细胞内的微型分子机器)。
Enzymes work by helping chemical reactions happen at a microscopic scale, sometimes forcing reactive atoms closer together to bind them, or twisting complex molecules at specific points to make them weaker and more likely to break apart.
酶的工作原理是帮助微观尺度上化学反应的发生，有时促使反应性原子靠近以使它们结合，或者在特定点扭曲复杂分子，使它们变得更脆弱，更容易分解。
