【科學(xué)60秒】小小科學(xué)家揭開制茶丑聞(雙語有聲)
作者：hahaleaf
來源：滬江論壇
2011-09-16 08:00
詼諧的語言，生動的內(nèi)容一分鐘快速掌握科技最新動態(tài)?
After water, tea is the world's most popular drink. Now three New York City high school students [Catherine Gamble, Rohan Kirpekar and Grace Young] have discovered what may be a brewing scandal. Because they found stuff in lots of teas that shouldn't be there.
茶，是繼水之后最受人們歡迎的飲料。而來自紐約的三名高中生卻發(fā)現(xiàn)多種茶類飲料中含有雜質(zhì)。
The students were guided by professional researchers as they worked their way through 70 teas and 60 herbal varieties. The material tested came from 33 companies and originated in 17 countries.
在專業(yè)研究人員引導(dǎo)下，這幾名學(xué)生對來自17個國家33家公司的70種茶飲料以及60中草本植物進行了研究。
The high schoolers extracted and amplified the tea DNA and then sent it to a sequencing facility. They then compared the sequences they got back with known sequences listed in the GenBank database maintained by the US National Library of Medicine.
他們提取出茶葉DNA，擴增之后將其放入某測序設(shè)備中。隨后，他們將測得的序列與美國國立醫(yī)學(xué)圖書館基因庫中的已知序列進行比對。
The junior scientists found that four percent of the straight teas contained additional plant material. And more than a third of the herbal products included unlisted ingredients – such as the weeds bluegrass and white goosefoot. Four of the herbal mixes contained relatives of parsley. And seven had unlisted chamomile.
這些小科學(xué)家們發(fā)現(xiàn)4%的熱紅茶含有多余物質(zhì)；1/3以上的草本產(chǎn)品中包含未列出成分，如雜草早熟禾還有藜。四種草本混合物中含有荷蘭芹同科物種，七種中含有未標(biāo)明的洋甘菊成分。
The research was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. [Mark Stoeckle et al, Commercial Teas Highlight Plant DNA Barcode Identification Successes and Obstacles]
這項研究刊登在《自然》雜志推出的期刊《科學(xué)報告》上。
The effort shows that it's possible to cheaply identify food ingredients and do quality control. And all that chamomile may represent an attempt to keep us calm about impurities.
這項研究表明，我們完全有可能低價進行食品成分鑒定以及質(zhì)量控制。有雜質(zhì)就有雜質(zhì)吧，洋甘菊多少能幫忙降降火~