Medicine comes in lots of different packages. Painkillers in a tablet can make your headache go away. Antibiotic cream (抗菌素膏) from a tube can prevent your cuts from becoming infected. But can medicine come packaged in chicken eggs? A team of scientists from Scotland say “yes”. They’ve engineered special chickens that lay eggs with disease-treating drugs inside. These eggs come from chickens that have been engineered to produce certain drugs inside their egg whites. These drugs are made of molecules called proteins(蛋白质). Animals make thousands of proteins — they’re the main element in skin, hair, milk and meat. Since animals can make proteins easily, they’re good candidates (候选者) for making protein drugs. Researchers have already made cows, sheep and goats produce protein drugs in their milk. But chickens are cheaper to take care of, need less room, and grow faster than these other animals. Those qualities could make chickens a better choice to become living drug factories, says Simon Lillico of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland. Lillico and a team of researchers changed chickens’ DNA — the code that tells cells how to make proteins — so that the birds’ cells made two protein drugs. One drug can treat skin cancer, and the other treats a nerve disease called multiple sclerosis (多发性硬化). The scientists changed the chickens’ DNA so that the birds made these drugs only in their egg whites. This protects the chickens’ bodies from the drugs’ possible harmful effects and makes it easy for scientists to collect the drugs. 小题1:If you cut your finger, you may use ________ to cure it.
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