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

  1. polio
  2. pieces
  3. synthesizing
  4. injected
  5. cartoon
  6. accurate
  7. years
  8. sudden
  9. extremely
  10. 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

  1. accurate
  2. active
  3. allowed
  4. artificial
  5. bacteria
  6. biology
  7. builds
  8. cartoon
  9. case
  10. chromosome
  11. clyde
  12. colleagues
  13. construct
  14. developed
  15. difficult
  16. dna
  17. driving
  18. exciting
  19. experiment
  20. extremely
  21. fashion
  22. genes
  23. ham
  24. hardware
  25. hutchison
  26. ideas
  27. injected
  28. killed
  29. large
  30. method
  31. notions
  32. pair
  33. particles
  34. percent
  35. period
  36. phi
  37. piece
  38. pieces
  39. polio
  40. production
  41. prove
  42. sequence
  43. smith
  44. software
  45. started
  46. structure
  47. sudden
  48. synthesize
  49. synthesizing
  50. synthetic
  51. terms
  52. turned
  53. virus
  54. year
  55. years