美国国立卫生研究院的研究结果，已经找出了口腔伤口能够快速愈合的原因。这项研究的结果还有可能帮助我们让身体的其它部分更快地愈合。

Hoping to zero in on why the mouth heals much faster than other body parts, such as the skin, the researchers recruited 30 healthy, non-smoking volunteers for a simple experiment. They created a pair of three-millimeter-wide wounds in each subject: One on the inner cheek of the mouth and one on the arm. Then they tracked how these wounds healed over the next six days, collecting tissue samples before and after the injury. Finally, they studied the molecular profiles of these samples.

研究人员招募了30名健康的不抽烟的志愿者，在他们的身上制造了两个3毫米宽的伤口：一个在口腔内，另一个在手臂上。在接下来的六天之内，他们记录了这些伤口是如何愈合的，并且收集了受伤前后的组织样本。最后，通过研究这些样本的分子谱，研究人员得出了结论。

The direct comparison between skin and mouth wounds in the same person allowed the team to uncover “novel ‘molecular signatures’ that correspond to distinct stages of oral mucosa and skin during healing,” lead author Maria Morasso, chief scientist at the NIH’s Laboratory of Skin Biology, told Gizmodo via email.

美国国立卫生研究院皮肤生理实验室首席科学家Maria Morasso表示，研究团队比较了同一个人皮肤和口腔伤口的愈合过程，从而发现了新的“分子特性”，这些特性分别在伤口愈合的不同阶段发挥作用。

Almost every individual cell in our bodies has the same genetic code underlying it. But different types of cells carry different instructions on how these genes should be expressed. In mouth cells, the team found, their instructions told them to be ready to heal at any moment’s notice. These cells, unlike the arm skin cells, were already expressing patterns of genes that encourage wound repair, even before the injury had occurred. That allowed the cells to speed up the healing process, such as by limiting inflammation.

我们身体的每个细胞中都含有相同的遗传密码，但是不同的细胞携带着不同的表达指令，使得细胞们最终特征各异。研究团队发现，口腔细胞时刻准备着愈合，它们甚至在受到伤害之前就已经表达出了促进伤口修复的特性，这一点是手臂上的皮肤细胞所不具备的。口腔细胞所表达出来的这种性状，能够通过限制炎症的产生从而加速愈合的过程。

“The ‘priming’ of the oral cavity allows the cells to respond very rapidly to the wound and trigger a rapid closure, while the cells in the skin must first activate these mechanisms to be able to effectively close the wound,” Morasso explained. “This might be a reason why skin wounds heal slower when compared with the oral wounds.”

口腔细胞的未雨绸缪，使得一旦它们受到伤害，能够迅速作出反应并且开始愈合过程。然而，皮肤中的细胞要先激活某些机制才能开始修复伤口。Morasso认为这是造成皮肤伤口愈合得比口腔慢的根本原因。

The team then took things one step further. They isolated one of the key proteins that relays these priming instructions, called SOX2, and bred mice to have higher-than-normal levels of SOX2 expressed in their skin cells. When the skin of these mice was hurt, it then healed quicker than usual.

研究团队所得到的结果远不仅仅是这些。他们找到了一种关键的蛋白质——SOX2，就是这种蛋白质传递出提前准备愈合的指令。研究人员培育出了一种小白鼠，它们皮肤细胞中的SOX2含量比正常小鼠要高，在这种小白鼠受到伤害之后，伤口会比正常小鼠恢复得更快。

The animal results aren’t meant to be anything more than a proof of concept. But Morasso says this and future studies could help us figure out how to make our wounds heal more quickly, as well as how to treat wounds that seemingly can’t heal at all, a problem that’s especially common with conditions like late-stage diabetes.

Morasso表示，这项研究或许能帮助我们在未来找到让伤口愈合得更快的方法，甚至是促进一些难以愈合的伤口恢复，例如晚期糖尿病人身上的伤口。