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The story of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 is familiar: a fungal spore wafting through the corridors of St Mary’s hospital and settling at random in Fleming’s petri dish contained penicillin, which turned out to be one of the most potent medical weapons of the 20th century.
1928 年，亚历山大·弗莱明发现青霉素的故事众所周知：一枚真菌孢子飘荡在圣玛丽医院的走廊，然后偶然落在弗莱明的培养皿中，其中含有青霉素，后来证明它是 20 世纪最重要的医学突破之一。
Less well known, but no less significant, is the story of the Rutgers University chemist Selman Waksman, who coined the term “antibiotic” after noting that certain soil bacteria produced toxins that killed or inhibited other bacteria with whom they were competing for food.
美国罗格斯大学的化学家塞尔曼·瓦克斯曼的故事相对较为鲜为人知，但同样具有重要意义。他创造了“抗生素”（antibiotic）这个术语，主要起因是他注意到某些土壤细菌产生的毒素能够杀死或抑制与它们竞争食物的其他细菌。
Waksman worked tirelessly to figure out the conditions required to grow these wild bacteria in his lab, and his efforts produced not just the second commercially available antibiotic, streptomycin, in 1946, but the next five antibiotics brought to market, too.
瓦克斯曼孜孜不倦地研究，以找出实验室培养这些野生细菌所需的条件，他的努力让他不仅在1946年生产出第二种商用抗生素链霉素，而且还生产出随后进入市场的五种抗生素。
Ultimately, searching the soil for antibiotic-producing microbes proved far more fruitful than waiting for them to float into one’s laboratory.
最终，在土壤中寻找产生抗生素的微生物被证明比等待它们飘进实验室要有成效得多。
Today, 90% of all antibiotics are descended from the grouping of bacteria that yielded Waksmans original discoveries.
如今，90%的抗生素都来自于瓦克斯曼最初发现的那组细菌。
Efforts like Waksman’s were relatively rare.
像瓦克斯曼这样的努力相对罕见。
It wasn’t until the discovery of simple chemical techniques to read the sequence of DNA – first emerging in the 1970s, but widely and commercially available from the mid-1980s – that things began to change.
直到人类发现了读取DNA序列的简单化学技术，事情才开始发生变化。读取DNA序列的技术最早出现在20世纪70年代，但从20世纪80年代中期才开始广泛商业化。
Suddenly the microbes under the microscope could be catalogued and identified by their DNA, which also hinted at how they might grow and function.
突然间，显微镜下的微生物可以通过DNA进行分类、识别，这也为它们生长和运作的可能模式提供了线索。
Not only that, says Handelsman, “the genetic diversity we were seeing was enormous”.
不仅如此，汉德尔斯曼还说：“我们看到的基因多样性十分丰富”。
It turned out that “these life forms that looked quite similar are in fact very, very different. It opened this door to realising how much more was out there.”
研究结果证明，“这些看起来非常相似的生命形式实际上截然不同。这项技术打开了一扇门，让我们意识到外面有如此多的物种。”
About 25 years ago, the consensus among scientists was that there were probably fewer than ten million species of microbes on the planet; in the past decade, some new studies have put the number as high as a trillion, the vast majority still unknown.
大约25年前，科学家普遍认为，地球上的微生物种类可能不到1000万种；在过去的十年里，一些新的研究认为微生物种类高达一万亿种，其中绝大多数仍然未被发现。
In our bodies, scientists have found microbes that affect everything from our ability to resist disease to our very moods.
科学家们还在我们的身体内发现了微生物，它们对我们的免疫力甚至情绪都具有影响。
In the deep seas, scientists have found microbes that live on boiling thermal vents.
在深海中，科学家们还发现了生存在沸腾的热液喷口处的微生物。
In crude oil deposits, they have found microbes that have evolved to break down fossil fuels.
在原油储层中，他们还发现了能够进化出分解化石燃料的微生物。
The more we look, the more extraordinary discoveries we will make.
我们探究得越深入，就会有越多令人惊奇的发现。
