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  3. A Genome Milestone It was the biggest scientific grudge match since the space race. The Genome Wars had everything: two grou

A Genome Milestone It was the biggest scientific grudge match since the space race. The Genome Wars had everything: two grou

admin2013-07-11  27
问题                         A Genome Milestone
    It was the biggest scientific grudge match since the space race. The Genome Wars had everything: two groups with appealing leaders ready to fight in a scientific dead heat, pushing the limits of technology and rhetoric as they battled to become the first to read every last one of the 3 billion DNA "letters" in the human body. The scientific importance of the work is unquestionable. The completed DNA sequence is expected to give scientists unprecedented insights into the workings of the human body, revolutionizing medicine and biology. But the race itself, between the government’s Human Genome Project and Rockville, Md. , biotechnology company Celera Genomics, was at least partly symbolic, the public/private conflict played out in a genetic lab.
    Now the race is over. After years of public attacks and several failed attempts at reconciliation, the two sides are taking a step toward a period of calm. HGP head Francis Collins (and Ari Patrinos of the Department of Energy, an important ally on the government side) and Craig Venter, the founder of Celera, agreed to hold a joint press conference in Washington this Monday to declare that the race was over(sort of) , that both sides had won (kind of) and that the hostilities were resolved (for the time being).
    No one is exactly sure how things will be different now. Neither side will be turning off its sequencing machines any time soon the "finish lines" each has crossed are largely arbitrary points, "first drafts" rather than the definitive version. And while the joint announcement brings the former Genome Warriors closer together than they’re been in years, insiders say that future agreements are more likely to take the form of coordination, rather than outright collaboration.
    The conflict blew up, this February when Britain’s Wellcome Trust, an HGP participant, released a confidential letter to Celera outlining the HGP’s complaints. Venter called the move " a lowlife thing to do". But by spring, there were the first signs of a thaw. "The attacks and nastiness are bad for science and our investors," Venter told Newsweek in March, "and fighting back is probably not helpful." At a cancer meeting earlier this month, Venter and Collins praised each other’s approaches, and expressed hope that all of the scientists involved in sequencing the human genome would be able to share the credit. By late last week, that hope was becoming a reality as details for Monday’s joint announcement were hammered out. Scientists in both camps welcomed an end to the hostilities. "If this ends the horse race, science wins." With their difference behind them, or at least set aside, the scientists should now be able to get down to the interesting stuff: figuring how to make use of all that data.
The recent Genome Wars were symbolic of
选项 A、the enthusiasm in scientific research
B、the significance of the space race
C、the public versus private conflict
D、the prospect of the completion of DNA sequence
答案C
解析 本题考查事实细节。文章首段最后一句话说：政府的人类基因组项目与塞莱拉基因公司之间的竞争至少具有部分的象征意义——公私矛盾在基因实验室上演。[C]项是对该句的改写，是正确项。[A]项是文中没有涉及的问题。文章首句提到了太空竞赛，是为了说明基因之战的激烈性，与它的象征意义无关，[B]项不能选。[D]项在第四句论述基因组项目的重要性时提及，也与“基因组之战”的象征意义无关。
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