PrepTest 110, Section 1, Question 18
In the eighteenth century the French naturalist Jean(442 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(15 more words not shown)
- AIt can be(6 more words not shown)
- BIt can be(7 more words not shown)
- CIt can be(12 more words not shown)
- DIt can be(13 more words not shown)
- EIt can be(5 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Start with what the experiment actually does. An experimenter removes the wall from one bacterium. That bacterium then grows and multiplies without walls, passing the wall-less condition to descendants.
What we’re looking for
That gives us a way for the condition to begin in a population. It doesn't yet tell us how to reverse it or whether a separate bacterium could pick it up through contact.
Working the answers
- A
We aren't told that introducing a gene can restore the walls. The example explains how wall loss occurs, not how to reverse it.
- B
No virus introduces a gene in this example. The experimenter removes the wall. The virus belongs to the separate fruit-fly discussion.
- CCorrect
Removing the wall from a single bacterium starts the process: it keeps growing and reproducing without cell walls, with no endpoint to that reproduction (paragraph 2). Its multiplication explains how the wall-less condition can appear in its descendants.
- D
There is no discussion of restoring walls to a group, stopping the process, or distinguishing stopping from reversing it.
- E
Descendants inheriting the condition is not the same as another bacterium acquiring it horizontally. Paragraph 2 describes multiplication after wall removal, not contact-based transfer to a separate bacterium. Horizontal gene acquisition appears in the later plasmid example. We cannot import that mechanism into this one.
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