full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Craig Venter: Sampling the ocean's DNA
Unscramble the Blue Letters
The only way to prove these idaes was to construct an artificial chromosome with those genes in them, and we had to do this in a cassette-based fashion. We found that syznnsieithg atrcucae DNA in large pecies was eetlerxmy difficult. Ham Smith and Clyde Hutchison, my colleagues on this, developed an exciting new method that allowed us to synthesize a 5,000-base pair virus in only a two-week period that was 100 percent accurate, in terms of its sequence and its biology. It was a quite exciting experiment — when we just took the synthetic piece of DNA, ietcnjed it in the bacteria and all of a sdduen, that DNA started driving the production of the virus particles that turned around and then killed the bacteria. This was not the first synthetic virus — a piloo virus had been made a year before — but it was only one ten-thousandth as active and it took three yraes to do. This is a caootrn of the structure of phi X 174. This is a case where the software now builds its own hardware, and that's the notions that we have with biology.
Open Cloze
The only way to prove these _____ was to construct an artificial chromosome with those genes in them, and we had to do this in a cassette-based fashion. We found that ____________ ________ DNA in large ______ was _________ difficult. Ham Smith and Clyde Hutchison, my colleagues on this, developed an exciting new method that allowed us to synthesize a 5,000-base pair virus in only a two-week period that was 100 percent accurate, in terms of its sequence and its biology. It was a quite exciting experiment — when we just took the synthetic piece of DNA, ________ it in the bacteria and all of a ______, that DNA started driving the production of the virus particles that turned around and then killed the bacteria. This was not the first synthetic virus — a _____ virus had been made a year before — but it was only one ten-thousandth as active and it took three _____ to do. This is a _______ of the structure of phi X 174. This is a case where the software now builds its own hardware, and that's the notions that we have with biology.
Solution
- polio
- pieces
- synthesizing
- injected
- cartoon
- accurate
- years
- sudden
- extremely
- ideas
Original Text
The only way to prove these ideas was to construct an artificial chromosome with those genes in them, and we had to do this in a cassette-based fashion. We found that synthesizing accurate DNA in large pieces was extremely difficult. Ham Smith and Clyde Hutchison, my colleagues on this, developed an exciting new method that allowed us to synthesize a 5,000-base pair virus in only a two-week period that was 100 percent accurate, in terms of its sequence and its biology. It was a quite exciting experiment — when we just took the synthetic piece of DNA, injected it in the bacteria and all of a sudden, that DNA started driving the production of the virus particles that turned around and then killed the bacteria. This was not the first synthetic virus — a polio virus had been made a year before — but it was only one ten-thousandth as active and it took three years to do. This is a cartoon of the structure of phi X 174. This is a case where the software now builds its own hardware, and that's the notions that we have with biology.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
genetic code |
4 |
million rads |
3 |
genome project |
2 |
sloan foundation |
2 |
gene families |
2 |
artificial chromosome |
2 |
people immediately |
2 |
designer viruses |
2 |
biological warfare |
2 |
literally blown |
2 |
produce hydrogen |
2 |
Important Words
- accurate
- active
- allowed
- artificial
- bacteria
- biology
- builds
- cartoon
- case
- chromosome
- clyde
- colleagues
- construct
- developed
- difficult
- dna
- driving
- exciting
- experiment
- extremely
- fashion
- genes
- ham
- hardware
- hutchison
- ideas
- injected
- killed
- large
- method
- notions
- pair
- particles
- percent
- period
- phi
- piece
- pieces
- polio
- production
- prove
- sequence
- smith
- software
- started
- structure
- sudden
- synthesize
- synthesizing
- synthetic
- terms
- turned
- virus
- year
- years