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Di Lorenzo is convinced the danger of this kind of work is minimal.
迪·洛伦佐确信，这项工作的危险性很小。
“With early GMOs, people turned on them. Scientists were arrogant.
“人们对早期的转基因生物很反感。因为科学家们很傲慢。
It seemed like it was all about dominating nature and making profits.
这一切似乎都是为了主宰自然和赚取利润。
But we have a chance to remake that conversation.
但我们有机会重新展开这个这项对话。
We could enter a new partnership between science and the natural world.
我们可以在科学和自然世界之间建立新的伙伴关系。
If we present it honestly to people, they can decide whether it’s worth the risk.”
如果我们如实向公众阐述，他们可以决定是否值得冒这份险。”
The vision of a deeper partnership with microbes is a powerful one.
与微生物建立更深层次的伙伴关系前景无限。
The EU has funded several groups to develop microbes and enzymes to turn plastic into fully biodegradable materials, rather than just new plastic.
欧盟已经向几个研究团队提供了资助，支持他们开发可以将塑料转化为可完全生物降解材料（而非只是新塑料）的微生物和酶。
Last year, a German group engineered the Ideonella sakaiensis PETase into a marine algae, noting that someday it could be used to break down microplastic in the ocean.
去年，德国的一个研究团队将大阪堺菌的 PET 酶改造成海藻类，并指出有一天可以利用这种藻类来降解海洋中的微塑料。
Oda is convinced we haven’t even scratched the surface.
小田教授深信我们只是了解了一些皮毛。
When he and his colleagues first found Ideonella at the dump nearly 20 years ago, it wasn’t working solo.
20 年前，他和同事在垃圾场首次发现大阪堺菌时，它并非在单独工作。
“As soon as I saw the film of micro-organisms on the plastic, I knew it was many microbes working together,” Oda told me.
小田教授说：“当我看到微生物薄膜覆盖在塑料上时，我就知道有许多微生物在协同工作。”
His team realised that while Ideonella was breaking the plastic into its industrially valuable precursors, other microbes were stepping in to further chew those into simple nutrients the microbial community could use.
他的团队意识到，在大阪堺菌将塑料分解为具有工业价值的前体物质时，还有其他微生物在进一步将这些前体物质分解成微生物群落可以利用的简单营养物质。
They were symbiotic. Partners, in a way.
这些微生物之前存在共生关系，在某种程度上，它们是合作伙伴。
Oda has since written several papers pointing out that microbial communities might be developed into a system to remove micro- and nanoplastics from the soil. But he has received little interest.
自那以后，小田教授在发表的几篇论文中指出，可以将微生物群落开发成从土壤中消除微塑料和纳米塑料的系统。但他的研究没有得到多少关注。
In our conversations, Oda repeatedly bemoaned the lack of truly world-changing ideas coming from people who wanted to commercialise the discoveries he and his colleagues had made.
在我们的谈话中，小田教授一再哀叹，那些想把他和同事们的发现商业化的人，缺乏真正改变世界的眼光。
There was an incredible amount of excitement about a factory that could turn old plastic into new; far less, it seemed, about one that could turn plastic back into water and air.
人们对能够将旧塑料转化为新塑料的工厂异常兴奋，而对于一个能够将塑料重新转变为水和空气的工厂，兴趣似乎就少得多了。
