阅读理解
Life is full of surprises and you never know
how things will turn out.
Sir John Gurdon is a good example
of this. As a boy, he was told he was hopeless at science and was at bottom of his
class. Now, aged 79, the very same Gurdon shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine
with Japanese stem cell (干细胞) researcher Shinya Yamanaka.
Like so many scientists, Gurdon
shows us where the power of curiosity and perseverance(坚持) can lead.
When he was 15 in 1948, Gurdon ranked
last out of the 250 boys at his high school in biology and every other science subject.
Gurdon's high school science teacher even said that his dream of becoming a scientist
was "quite ridiculous".
In spite of his teacher's criticisms(批评), Gurdon
followed his curiosity and kept working hard. He went to the lab early and left
later than anyone else. He experienced thousands of failures.
"My own belief is that we will,
in the end, understand everything about how cells actually work," Gurdon said.
In 1962, Gurdon took a cell from
an adult frog and moved its genetic (基因的) information into an egg cell. The
egg cell then grew into a clone of the adult frog. This technique later helped to
create the sheep Dolly in 1996，the first cloned mammal(哺乳动物) in the world.
In 2006, Gurdon's work was developed
by Yamanaka to show that a sample(样本) of a person's skin can be used to
create stem cells. Using this technique, doctors can repair a patient's heart after
a heart attack.
"Luck favors the prepared mind,"
Gurdon told the Nobel Prize Organization. "Ninety percent of the time things
don't work, but when they do, you have to seize(抓住) the chance."
