寫我的英雄（My Hero）

係裏準備為阿肯森出書，這是我所貢獻的文字，已經獲得看過英文稿的熟人的好評。為了讓更多的人讀到，讓我花些時間把自己的英語文章翻譯成中文，隻因為他確實是我心中的英雄。即使是翻譯自己的文字，我還是尊重原文，我從來更講究故事的有趣性和文字的流暢性，翻譯的“信達雅”則對我要求太高了。

John: a legend, a mentor, and a friend

（約翰：傳奇，導師和朋友）

We were asked to give stories about John, and this was a recent one from me. One day I was passing Madonna's office, she called me: "（My name), could you help me check if Dr. Atkinson is in the man's room?". I was surprised but have to follow her order to the man's room to check. I saw that a chamber was closed but someone occupied it. I can't tell who was inside because the door was closed. Once I noticed many manuscript papers on the floor, I knew I got him. "Dr. Atkinson," I asked. He responded: "Yeah!", I then said: "Madonna said you have a phone call." Actually, the phone call was from Dr. Grant, the ophthalmologist who discovered the CRV syndrome with John. For so many years, I tried to suggest that because the names of CRV or RVCL were so confused that they should consider just name the syndrome "Grant-Atkinson disease."

(我們被索取寫些關於約翰的故事，這是近期發生的一個。一天我經過麥道娜的辦公室，她叫到我：“（我的名), 你能否幫我看看阿肯森醫生是否在男廁所裏？”。我著實對她的這個請求吃了一驚，但是仍然必須遵循女性的要求，去男廁所查看。我看見廁所的一個廂間是關著的，意味著有人在使用它。當我從縫隙裏看見論文的稿紙鋪滿地上時，我判斷就是他。“阿肯森醫生”，我問。他回答：“在啊”，我接著說：“麥道娜說你有個電話”。其實那個電話來自格蘭醫生，他是與約翰共同發現CRV綜合症的眼科醫生。這麽多年來，我一直這樣建議：鑒於現在的病名CRV或RVCL太令人困惑，他們應該考慮把這個綜合症命名為“格蘭-阿肯森病”。）

John is such a dedicated man who works long hours on weekdays and virtually every Saturday in the lab for so many decades. We all search for so-called biomarkers in our studies, our lab's routine signal is that once the door was opened before 7 AM it indicated that John was in town as he always comes to work that early. It was equally amazing that there were baked foods available in the office every Friday morning spanning more than thirty years, he brought them from bakery store of the neighborhood when he came to work.

（約翰是一位相當富有奉獻精神的人，在平日的每天和在周末，他會長時間地在實驗室裏工作，幾十年如一日。我們從事醫學研究的人都希望尋找那些識別或判斷疾病進度的所謂生物指標或標記物，那些給我們信息的東西。我們實驗室的信號是這樣的：隻要實驗室的門是在早晨七點鍾之前開了，這就說明約翰在聖路易斯，因為他總是這麽早來上班。同樣令人感歎的是：每個周五的早晨，在辦公室都會有烘焙的食物，據說這個傳統超過了三十年，因為約翰在上班前會去鄰家的那個固定的烘焙店買些帶來。）

John has his historical place in the research area of complement and innate immunity by discovering the membrane complement regulators and RCA gene cluster, I remembered clearly in one lecture at WashU, John paused a little bit in watching the slide of the diagram of MCP, he said: "This molecule dears to my heart." In one of the international conference, one graduate student from Piet Gros' group came to me and said that they could not believe that John and his colleague mutated virtually all of the amino acids of MCP molecule. She told me that nowadays nobody is going to do science like this to generate a single JBC paper.

（因為發現補體的細胞膜調節蛋白和係列RCA基因聚集區，約翰已經奠定了他在補體和天然免疫研究領域的曆史性地位。我仍然清晰地記得，在一次華大的演講中，約翰麵對他發現和命名的MCP分子的圖解幻燈片，他停頓了片刻後深情地說：“這個分子讓我特別暖心”。在一次國際會議的場合，荷蘭科學家Piet Gros研究組的一位博士生與我交談。她說他們不能想像約翰和他的同事們幾乎將MCP蛋白中的每個氨基酸都突變了。她進一步說，現在沒有人這樣做科學了，如此繁重的工作隻為產生一篇JBC的文章。）（備注：那篇JBC至少可以分成3-5篇文章，但是他們不願意這樣做）。

But the most important thing for me is that he is a decent human being. I think there was a famous Chinese phrase termed "嚴於律己，寬以待人," it could be translated into English as "Self-discipline and lenient towards others," John is indeed such person, a warm-hearted Midwest American who was born in the Fourth of July. A farmer's boy who went all the way from Kansas to Harvard and finally becomes a legend at Washington University in St. Louis. John's father served in the World War II in Alaska against Japanese army, but his early lab was an attractive place for Japanese trainees as one former postdoc fellow occasionally slept in John's office in those busy and exciting years of discovering MCP.

（對我來說最重要的事情是約翰是一位純粹而高尚的人。我想到中國的一句俗語“嚴於律己，寬以待人”，翻譯成英文為 "Self-discipline and lenient towards others,"，約翰確實是這樣的一位人，一位出生在七月四日獨立日的陽光燦爛的美國中西部人。作為農民的兒子，他從堪薩斯去哈佛並且最終成為聖路易斯華盛頓大學的一個傳奇。在第二次世界大戰中，約翰的父親參與了在阿拉斯加的對日本作戰，但是約翰早期的實驗室為相當吸引日本博士後的地方，在發現MCP的繁忙和激動人心的歲月，一位前日本博士後有時甚至睡在約翰的辦公室裏。）

John was undoubtedly the team member of University of Kansas' basketball, but there was a little secret that his wife Andrea leaked to my wife （名字省略） when she guided the group touring Beijing. Andrea said when they were dating in the high school, John's energy and activity in the basketball court were substantially increased when Andrea appeared the court.

（眾所周知，約翰曾經是堪薩斯大學籃球隊的成員之一，然而在這裏我想透露一個小的秘密，我太太帶領夫人們遊曆北京時，約翰的太太安卓雅告訴我太太的故事。安卓雅說，他們在高中相戀，當她出現在籃球場的時候，約翰的能量和活力都會顯著地增加。）

When Richard retired from the lab, I went with him to Little Saigon for celebration. We all believed John is such a gifted man for virtually every part that he had passions on them; we certainly wish him great health and wellbeing in the years to come.

（當理查德從實驗室退休時，我邀請他去小西貢餐廳慶祝。我們都相信，約翰是位相當難得的人物，他在自己熱愛的幾乎所有方麵都做得傑出；我們當然殷切希望他在未來的歲月裏擁有好的身體和精神。）

Descriptions for the photo: This photo was taken in Basel, Switzerland when we had our complement workshop; this is our big family when my daughter （名字省略）was so young and seemed in charging of the table, now she is going to be a sophomore at WashU. I remembered that dinner was paid by John's credit card with more than 700 Swiss francs while Claudia was helping John to calculate the tips.

（對這張照片的描述：拍攝於我們在瑞士巴塞爾開補體會議的時候，這是我們的大家庭。當時我女兒是多麽小，她的態勢似乎她在主宰著這餐桌，如今她將要成為華大的二年級的學生。我仍然記得那餐的超過七百瑞士法朗的費用，是約翰用信用卡支付的，當時克拉蒂雅幫助約翰計算出了小費的額度。）（注: 受訓於約翰實驗室的克拉蒂雅已經成為她所在領域的領袖人物，由於照片涉及私人不便在大眾媒體中展現。）

阿肯森夫婦與他最得意的學生Andy Chan。來自香港的安迪在西北大學讀完本科和碩士，他的MD/PhD學位是在聖路易斯華大獲得的。安迪在UCSF做臨床專科時因發現重要淋巴細胞傳導蛋白ZAP-70而出名，後來重回華大做教授和HHMI研究員。安迪現為Genentech的資深副總裁（SVP), 他是阿肯森的驕傲。

這裏還有一個信息值得分享，突顯中美文化之不同：阿肯森在自己行政任務繁重時，他因考慮沒精力顧及他們而停止招博士生，在他的慢長而輝煌的研究生涯裏僅培養了十位左右的博士，博士後或臨床Fellow則不少。

阿肯森和CRV病人Kim在華大醫學院水壇前。該水壇為阿肯森的病人家屬捐贈，為耶魯校友Maya Lin設計的。