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This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔。

In the science fiction story Dune¹, the desert planet Arrakis is inhabited by enormous, fearsome sandworms.

在科幻小说《沙丘》中，沙漠星球阿拉基斯上居住着巨大且可怕的沙虫。

(CLIP: "Gods, what a monster.")

（电影片段剪辑：“天哪，多可怕的怪物啊！”）

They blast out of the dunes² to swallow vehicles whole. They also looked sort of familiar to Caltech geneticist Paul Sternberg. 

沙虫冲出沙丘，吞下所有交通工具。加州理工学院的遗传学家保罗·斯特恩伯格对它们也很熟悉。

"They look like nematodes. You know, anything in the popular culture that has a relationship to worms, we follow."

“它们看起来很像线虫。流行文化中与蠕虫有关的任何东西，我们都会研究。”

Nematodes, of course, are much smaller than sandworms. "Most nematodes, you can just barely see." And they're much slower: “"These worms would probably take 100 years to get across the U.S. if they could do it, and they went continuously day and night."

当然，线虫的体型比沙虫要小得多。“大多数线虫几乎无法用肉眼看见。”而且它们的速度也要慢得多：“这些蠕虫可能要花100年才能穿越美国，如果它们能做到的话，而且还是在它们日夜兼程的情况下。”

Even so:

尽管如此：

"They're pretty scary when you look at them up close."

“当你近距离观察它们的时候，依然会觉得相当可怕。”

Sternberg and his colleagues had a hunch⁴ they might find nematodes lurking⁵ in one of California's most extreme habitats: Mono Lake, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. It's supersalty, alkaline and loaded with arsenic⁶—and, previously⁷, known to harbor only two animal species: brine shrimp⁸ and alkali flies.

斯特恩伯格和同事有一种预感，他们可能会发现潜伏的线虫，而发现地是加州最极端的栖息地之一：内华达山脉东侧的莫诺湖。该地盐分超标、含碱而且富含砷，此前，这里只有两种已知物种：盐水虾和碱蝇。

So the researchers took soil samples at beaches around the lake. And indeed, they found eight species of nematodes living there! "So we just went from two animals to at least 10 species. So that's what's kind of striking. So are there gonna be others in the lake? Yeah! People should go look."

因此，研究人员在湖周围的海滩上采集了土壤样本。他们确实在那里发现了8种线虫！“所以，现在这里的物种已经从两种增加到了至少10种。这就是令人吃惊之处。湖里还有其他物种吗？有！人们应该去寻找。”

Photos and details are in the journal Current Biology.

研究的照片和详情刊登在《当代生物学》期刊上。

Sternberg and his colleagues were able to culture one of the worm species in the lab. They discovered that it could survive 500 times the dose of arsenic that would kill a human. But they also found that even nematodes that weren't from Mono Lake seemed to have the genetic³ ability to resist the lethal⁹ element—meaning the worms may be natural-born extremophiles.

斯特恩伯格和同事在实验室里培育出了一种蠕虫。他们发现，这种蠕虫能承受的砷剂量是人类的500倍。但他们同时发现，即使不是来自莫诺湖的线虫似乎也有抵抗致命元素的遗传能力，这意味着线虫可能是天生的极端微生物。

"From the worm's perspective, invading a host is a harsh environment. So I think there's some general ability of the nematodes to adapt to harsh environments."

“从线虫的角度来看，入侵宿主是一种恶劣的环境。所以我认为线虫有适应恶劣环境的一般能力。”

Like maybe Mars?

比如火星环境？

"I have a fantasy that we should send nematodes. It would be really interesting if we could get the nematodes to photosynthesize—or carry photosynthetic¹⁰ organisms."

“我有一个幻想，我们应该将线虫送到火星上去。如果我们能让线虫进行光合作用，或者携带光合生物，那可能会相当有趣。”

Of course, that scenario¹¹ is in the realm of science fiction. For now.

当然，这种场景只在科幻小说里才有。至少目前是这样。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。