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For most of the roughly 200 years we have been seriously studying them, microbes were in a sort of scientific jail: mainly assumed to be pathogens in need of eradication, or simple workhorses for a few basic industrial processes, such as fermenting wine or cheese.
在我们认真研究微生物的约200年的大部分时间里，微生物都处于某种科学监禁状态。主流观点认为微生物是需要根除的病原体，或者是在一些基本工业过程(如酿葡萄酒或发酵奶酪)中扮演简单主力的角色。
“Even as recently as 40-50 years ago, microbiology was treated as a passe science,” Handelsman, the former American Society for Microbiology president, told me.
“即使是在四五十年前，微生物学还被视为过时的科学，”美国微生物学会前主席汉德尔斯曼告诉我。
In the 20th century, as physics advanced to split the atom, and biologists came to classify many of the world’s plant and animal species, scientists who studied the very, very small domains of life lagged behind.
在20世纪，随着物理学领域将原子分裂取得重大进展，生物学家也开始对世界上许多动植物物种进行分类，而那些研究微小生命领域的科学家则落在了后面。
But there were tantalising signs of the hidden world just beyond our reach.
不过，我们无法企及的隐秘世界显示出引人入胜的迹象。
As early as the 1930s, microbiologists were puzzling over the disconnect between the microbial world they encountered in the wild and what they could study in the laboratory.
早在20世纪30年代，微生物学家就开始对他们在野外遇到的微生物世界与他们在实验室研究的东西之间的不一致感到困惑。
They found that if they placed a sample – say a drop of seawater or smear of dirt – under a microscope, they could see hundreds of wondrous and varied organisms swirling about.
他们发现，如果把样本--比如一滴海水或一抹泥土--放在显微镜下，就可以看到成百上千种神奇而多样的生物在上面旋转。
But if they placed the same sample on to the gelatinous nutrient slurry of a petri dish, only a few distinct species would survive and grow.
但如果他们把同样的样本放在培养皿中的胶状营养浆液上，只有少数几个不同的物种能存活和生长。
When they went to count the number of microbial colonies growing on the plate, it was a meagre handful compared to what they had just seen magnified.
当他们计算培养皿上生长的微生物菌落数量时，会发现与他们刚刚看到的放大后的微生物菌落相比，数量稀少得可怜。
This would later be dubbed “the great plate count anomaly”.
这一现象后来被称为“平板计数差异法”。
“With the microscope, and then the electron microscope, you could see all these hints. But these species wouldn’t grow on the plates, which is how we would characterise and study them,” said William Summers, a physician and historian of science at Yale.
耶鲁大学医生兼科学史学家威廉·萨默斯说：“使用显微镜，包括后来的电子显微镜，你可以看到所有这些迹象。但这些物种无法在培养皿上生长，而在培养皿上进行研究就是我们进行描述和研究的方式。”
Like a rare and exotic animal that cannot thrive in captivity, most micro-organisms didn’t seem suited for life in the lab.
就像一种稀有的外来动物不能在圈养中茁壮成长一样，大多数微生物似乎不适合在实验室生活。
And so scientists were stuck with whatever could survive in their limited conditions.
因此，科学家被困在任何可以在有限的条件下生存的东西上。
Yet there were some microbiologists who attempted to escape this straitjacket and discover the true extent of the microbial kingdom.
然而，也有一些微生物学家试图摆脱这一束缚，发现微生物王国的真实范围。
