Модульна контрольна робота №2

з практичного курсу перекладу

для студентів 5 курсу, групи ______

факультету перекладачів

Варіант 27

Task 1. Comment on grammatical specifics of translating media texts.

Task 2. Summarise the article into Ukrainian. Write at least 200-250 words.

Breathe in deeply, please

November 20, 2008 The Economist

Stem-cell medicine takes a step forward

IN THE hierarchy of transplant surgery, replacing a bronchus (the passage from the main windpipe, the trachea, into a lung) does not sound difficult compared with, say, plumbing in a new heart. In fact, until a few months ago, it had never been attempted. The reason was not that the surgery itself would be hard, but that the tissue in question, which is the first line of defense against the bacteria and viruses that come with every lungful of air, has a remarkably active immune response. So active, indeed, that if you transferred part of an airway from one person to another, the resulting immunological conflict would probably kill the recipient. Since a weak bronchus, though debilitating, is seldom life-threatening, transplant surgeons have left well-enough alone.

In a blaze of publicity this week, that changed. A paper in the Lancet, published by a team led by Paolo Macchiarini of the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, described such an operation, carried out in June on a patient called Claudia Castillo, whose left bronchus had been damaged by tuberculosis. The reason for the publicity, though, was not that this was the first bronchial transplant, but rather that it involved some serious bioengineering using stem cells.

Stem cells exist to replenish the supply of other cells. When a stem cell divides, it sometimes produces daughters that are different from one another. One is another stem cell. The other is the first step on the path to a particular sort of tissue such as the lining of a windpipe. The idea behind stem-cell bioengineering is to use the recipient’s own stem cells to create an artificial organ that will be recognised as part of the body by the recipient’s immune system, and thus not rejected. And this, in the case of Ms Castillo’s new bronchus, is what Dr Macchiarini and his team have done.

To make an artificial organ requires two things. One is the right sort of cells. The other is a framework on which to grow those cells so that they take up the right shape. Previous projects of this sort, which have successfully created artificial skin and artificial bladders, have relied on synthetic frameworks. A windpipe, though, is a more complicated structure than skin or a bladder. The starting point for Ms Castillo’s transplant, therefore, was a piece of trachea removed from a dead donor.

The team stripped this of its cells (and thus of the antigens that provoke an immune response) by treating it with a special detergent. That left a trachea-shaped piece of cartilage. They then took samples of Ms Castillo’s other bronchus and also her bone marrow and grew them as cell cultures. The bronchial samples consisted mainly of what are known as epithelial cells, and with these it was just a question of multiplying their numbers. The bone marrow was the source of the stem cells that made the procedure newsworthy. Most bone-marrow stem cells generate blood cells. A few, though, can produce chondrocytes, the cells that make cartilage. The team extracted these, cultured them and then used a special growth factor to persuade them to spin off chondrocytes. Both epithelial cells and chondrocytes were applied liberally to the treated trachea and the result, when it had settled down into something that resembled a natural windpipe, was transplanted into Ms Castillo. She, as the photograph suggests, has now made a full recovery. And those who have been asking of stem-cell science, “Where’s the beef?”, have been served what is, at least, an appetiser.

Task 3. Write the annotation of the article in English. Use up to 100 words.