原文来源：可可英语晨读
单词：百度翻译
整理：啾啾
声明：标记了个人单词，仅作学习存档所用，如需浏览原文，请移步原公众号，侵权删。
Bacteria help pandas get the most out of being picky eaters, study says
研究表明，细菌能够帮助熊猫充分利用其挑食的习性
Pandas are famously picky eaters. They only consume bamboo — a poor quality diet low in fat.
But the creatures appear to have evolved to get the most out of what they do eat, according to a new study.
熊猫是出了名的挑食。他们只吃竹子——一种低脂肪的低质量饮食方式。
但根据一项新的研究，这种动物似乎已经进化到能够充分利用它们所吃的东西。
Their gut bacteria changes in late spring and early summer when bamboo is at its most nutritious — while it's sprouting protein-rich green shoots.
The bacteria makes the bear gain more weight and store more fat, which researchers said may compensate for a lack of nutrients later in the year, when bamboo plants have only fibrous leaves to chomp on.
他们的肠道细菌在春末夏初发生变化，这段时间是竹子最富营养的时候——也就是它长出富含蛋白质的绿芽的时候。
细菌使熊猫的体重增加，并储存更多的脂肪，研究人员说，这可能会弥补这一年中后面那些时期营养缺乏的状况，那时的竹子只有纤维状的叶子可供咀嚼。
"We've known these pandas have a different set of gut microbiota during the shoot-eating season for a long time, and it's very obvious that they are chubbier during this time of the year," said a researcher for the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a news release.
“我们就知道这些大熊猫在吃笋季节有不同的肠道菌群，很明显它们在一年中的这个时候更胖，”动物研究所的一名研究员在中国科学院的新闻发布会上说。
延伸阅读
The study was published on Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports.
该研究于周二发表在《细胞报告》杂志上。
To investigate how the gut bacteria could affect a panda's metabolism, the team first collected the feces of eight wild giant pandas in China's Qingling mountains during both leaf-eating season and shoot-eating season and then examined how the poop samples differed.
为了研究肠道细菌是如何影响熊猫的新陈代谢的，研究小组首先在中国的秦岭山脉采集了八只野生大熊猫分别在食叶季节和食笋季节的粪便，然后研究了粪便样本的差异。
They found that a bacterium called Clostridium butyricum was more abundant in the pandas' guts during the season when they enjoy the fresh bamboo shoots.
他们发现，熊猫的肠道中有一种叫做丁酸梭菌的细菌在它们吃新鲜竹笋的季节里数量更多。
To understand whether this bacteria helps the bears gain and store weight, the researchers performed a fecal transplant, putting the panda poop they collected into lab mice.
Then they fed the mice for three weeks with a bamboo-based diet that simulated what pandas eat.
为了了解这种细菌是否有助于熊猫增重和储存脂肪，研究人员进行了粪便移植，将收集到的熊猫粪便放入实验室小鼠体内。
然后他们模拟大熊猫的饮食方式，喂老鼠吃三周竹子。
