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ONE sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any ailment. There are, sadly, no panaceas. But some things come close, and exercise is one of them. As doctors never tire of reminding people, exercise protects against a host of illnesses, from heart attacks and dementia to diabetes and infection.
How it does so, however, remains surprisingly mysterious. But a paper just published in Nature by Beth Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre and her colleagues sheds some light on the matter.
Dr Levine and her team were testing a theory that exercise works its magic, at least in part, by promoting autophagy. This process, whose name is derived from the Greek for “self-eating”, is a mechanism by which surplus, worn-out or malformed proteins and other cellular components are broken up for scrap and recycled.
To carry out the test, Dr Levine turned to those stalwarts of medical research, genetically modified mice. Her first batch of rodents were tweaked so that their autophagosomes—structures that form around components which have been marked for recycling—glowed green. After these mice had spent half an hour on a treadmill, she found that the number of autophagosomes in their muscles had increased, and it went on increasing until they had been running for 80 minutes.

A. 어휘
longevity 長壽(장수). sweat 땀. giveaway 무심코 누설하기, 배신.
quack 돌팔이 의사. 엉터리의. treat 치료하다. ailment 병.
panaceas 만병통치약. tire of 싫증나다. remind 상기시키다.
a host of 수많은. host 떼, 큰 무리. heart attacks 심장마비.
dementia 癡呆(치매). diabetes 당뇨병. infection 感染(감염), 전염병.
sheds 눈물을 흘리다, 빛을 내다. sheds some light on 밝혀내다.
autophagy 자가 소화활동. derived from 파생하다, 由來(유래)하다.
Greek 그리스語. mechanism 기계, 기계작동, 조직, 작용과정.
surplus 剩餘(잉여). worn-out 닳아 헤진, 노쇠한, 지친.
malformed 奇形(기형)의, 잘못 만들어진. cellular components 세포구성분.
scrap 조각, 쪼가리. stalwarts 충실한 사람, 건장한 사람.
genetically modified 유전적으로 변형된. batch 한 번 굽는 양, 한 배 새끼, 무리.
rodents 齧齒類(설치류), 쥐. first batch of rodents 첫 배의 쥐.
tweak 조작하다, 비틀다. marked for recycling 재활용을 위해 운명 지어진.
glow 빛나다, 불타다. treadmill 런닝 머신. muscles 근육.