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Gene-editing has created a generation of musical crops
基因編輯創造了一代音樂作物
It has been known for some time that plants can talk to one another.
人們知道植物可以相互交談已經有段時間了。
Many communicate chemically, both through the air and via their roots—warning each other, for example, of the arrival of herbivorous insects in order to co-ordinate their responses to these pests.
許多植物通過空氣和樹根進行化學交流——例如，相互警告食草昆蟲的到來，以便協調它們對這些害蟲的反應。
Those responses are also often a form of communication, namely a further release of chemicals that recruit predators and parasites of said herbivores.
這些反應通常也是一種交流形式，即進一步釋放化學物質，以“招募”這些食草昆蟲的捕食者和寄生蟲。
These then solve their summoners' problems by having lunch.
然后，它們可以幫忙解決召集生物的一頓午餐難題了。
Plants' interactions with sound are less well understood, though it is known that flowers such as evening primroses can detect the buzzing of bees and respond by producing sweeter nectar.
植物與聲音的相互作用還不太清楚，盡管人們知道，像月見草這樣的花可以探測到蜜蜂的嗡嗡聲，并通過產生更甜的花蜜來回應。
Moreover, a paper published in this week's Cell, by Lilach Hadany of Tel-Aviv University and her colleagues, describes how plants make noises when they are stressed by drought or physical damage.
此外，特拉維夫大學的利拉赫·韓達尼和她的同事在本周的《細胞》雜志上發表了一篇論文，描述了植物在承受干旱或物理損傷的壓力時是如何發出聲音的。
Dr Hadany and her team do not yet know whether other plants are listening, but suspect that they might be.
韓達尼博士和她的團隊還不知道其他植物是否在傾聽，但懷疑它們可能會傾聽。
None of this is news, however, to Paolo Fril, CEO and chief scientist of the Gene Duplication Corporation (GeneDupe), a biotechnology firm in San Melito, California.
然而，對于基因復制公司的首席執行官兼首席科學家保羅·弗里爾來說，這些都不是新聞，這家生物技術公司位于加州圣梅利托。
Observing that gardeners and greenhouse owners, from Britain's new king, Charles III, downwards, often talk to their charges, and sometimes even play them music, he and his team have been investigating plants' aural and oral activities for several years, and are now tweaking them using crispr-Cas9 gene-editing technology.
他觀察到，英國新國王查爾斯三世的園丁和溫室所有者經常與他們的種植物交談，有時甚至給它們播放音樂，他和他的團隊幾年來一直在研究植物的聽覺和口頭活動，現在正在使用crispr-Cas9基因編輯技術對它們進行調整。
The plan is to create a range of products which Dr Fril hopes will please his firm's shareholders—which he needs to do after an awkward run-in the company had a few years ago with some animal-rights activists over its previous product, Print-a-pet.
該計劃是創造一系列的產品，弗里爾博士希望這些產品能取悅他公司的股東——在幾年前該公司與一些動物權利保護者就其之前的產品“寵物打印”發生了尷尬的沖突之后，他需要這樣做。
Fortunately for Dr Fril, the plant-welfare lobby is not nearly as large and noisy as its animal counterpart.
對弗里爾博士來說，幸運的是，植物權利游說團體遠沒有動物團體那么大，那么吵。
The obvious place for this new endeavour to start was with the ears of cereal crops.
這項新的嘗試顯然要從谷物的“耳朵”開始。
Though not ears in the conventional sense of the word, GeneDupe's biotechnologists realised that they could be turned into such.
雖然不是傳統意義上的耳朵，但基因復制公司的生物技術專家意識到它們可以變成“耳朵”。
Each of the spikes attached to the seeds in an ear of barley, wheat or rye has a resonant frequency that depends, like the note plucked from a harp string, on its length.
在大麥、小麥或黑麥的穗中，每一個附著在種子上的穗狀物都有一個共振頻率，就像從豎琴弦上撥動的音符一樣，取決于它的長度。
If those lengths can be varied precisely from seed to seed by appropriate gene editing, such an “ear” can be made into a real ear, with every spike responding to its own, unique, resonant frequency in a manner similar to the hair cells in the mammalian version of that organ.
如果可以通過適當的基因編輯準確地改變種子與種子之間的長度，這樣的“耳朵”就可以被變成真正的耳朵，每一個穗狀物都可以對自己獨特的共振頻率做出反應，就像哺乳動物的毛發細胞一樣。
