A. TRADE B. PURSUIT C. BUSINESS D. CONCERN III. READ THE PASSAG...

10. A. trade

B. pursuit

C. business

D. concern

III. Read the passage and choose the best answer.

The first two decades of this century were dominated by the microbe hunters. These hunters

had tracked down one after another of the microbe responsible for the most dreaded scourges of many

centuries: tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria. But there remained some terrible diseases for which no

microbe could be incriminated: scurvy, pellagra, rickets, and beriberi. Then it was discovered that

these diseases were caused by the lack of vitamins, a trace substance in the diet. The diseases could be

prevented or cured by consuming foods that contained the vitamins. And so in the decades of the

1920’s and 1930’s, nutrition became a science and the vitamin hunters replaced the microbe hunters.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, biochemists strived to learn why each of the vitamins was essential

for health. They discovered that key enzymes in metabolism depend on one or another of the vitamins

as coenzymes to perform the chemistry that provides cells with energy for growth and function. Now,

these enzyme hunters occupied center stage.

You are aware that the enzyme hunters have been replaced by a new breed of hunters who are

tracking genes – the blueprints for each of the enzymes – and are discovering the defective genes that

cause inherited diseases – diabetes, cystic fibrosis. These gene hunters, or genetic engineers, use

recombinant DNA technology to identify and clone genes and introduce them into bacterial cells and

plants to create factories for the massive production of hormones and vaccines for medicine and for

better crops for agriculture. Biotechnology has become a multibillion-dollar industry.

In view of the inexorable progress in science, we can expect that the gene hunters will be

replaced in the spotlight. When and by whom? Which kind of hunter will dominate the scene in the

last decade of our waning century and in the early decades of the next? I wonder whether the hunters

who will occupy the spotlight will be neurobiologists who apply the techniques of the enzyme and

gene hunters to the functions of the brain. What to call them? The head hunters. I will return to them

later.