前言 Foreword
瑞典卡罗琳斯卡学院在斯德哥尔摩宣布,将2017年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖颁给三名美国科学家，以此鼓励他们发现人体生物钟的分子机制。
在你熬夜修仙的时候，有人拿了关于熬夜的诺贝尔奖……
新闻背景
Three scientists who unravelled how our bodies tell time have won the 2017 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. The body clock - or circadian rhythm - is the reason we want to sleep at night, but it also drives huge changes in behaviour and body function. The US scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young will share the prize.（BBC NEWS）
【1】metabolism：新陈代谢
The Nobel prize committee said their findings had "vast implications for our health and wellbeing". A clock ticks in nearly every cell of the human body, as well as in plants, animals and fungi. Our mood, hormone levels, body temperature and metabolism all fluctuate in a daily rhythm.
【2】 ghastly ：可怕的，惊人的
The ghastly experience of jet lag is caused by the body being out of sync with the world around it. In the short term, body clock disruption affects memory formation, but in the long term it increases the risk of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
再来一点点：
look/feel ghastly：看上去/感觉有病[烦恼，不高兴]
【3】molecular：分子的
"They have shown us how molecular clocks are built across all the animal kingdom." said Prof Russell Foster, a body clock scientist at the University of Oxford. The trio's breakthroughs were on fruit flies, but their findings explain how "molecular feedback loops" keep time in all animals.
【4】oscillate： 振荡；摆动
Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash isolated a section of DNA called the period gene, which had been implicated in the circadian rhythm. The period gene contained instructions for making a protein called PER. Levels of the PER protein oscillate over a 24-hour cycle - rising during the night and falling during the day.
再来一点点：
destabilize：使动摇
【5】night owl：夜猫子，熬夜的人
If PER is more stable then the clock ticks more slowly, if it is less stable then it runs too fast. The stability of PER is one reason some of us are morning larks and others are night owls.
【6】astrology： 占星术；星座
Dr Michael Hastings, who researches circadian timing at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, said: "Before this work in fruit flies we really didn't have any ideas of the genetic mechanism - body clocks were viewed as a black box on a par with astrology."
结语
来源：BBC News