Q 01/05

In Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the 1980 ruling that living organisms can be patented, the bacterium was designed to do what?

A) Produce human insulin

B) Break down crude oil

C) Glow in the dark

D) Digest plastic waste

Answer · why

B) Break down crude oil

Ananda Chakrabarty's Pseudomonas bacterium was built to break down crude oil for cleaning up spills, and the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that his living o...

Q 02/05

The Flavr Savr, the first genetically engineered food licensed for sale in the US in 1994, was a slow-softening what?

A) A potato

B) A soybean

C) A tomato

D) A strawberry

Answer · why

C) A tomato

The Flavr Savr tomato, developed by the Californian company Calgene, carried a reversed gene that slowed production of a rotting enzyme so the fruit s...

Q 03/05

Kary Mullis said the idea for PCR, the DNA-copying method that earned him a Nobel, came to him while doing what?

A) Surfing at dawn

B) Driving in the countryside

C) Taking a hot shower

D) Dozing through a lecture

Answer · why

B) Driving in the countryside

Mullis was driving in the countryside near his Mendocino County home in 1983 when he hit on using two primers to bracket a stretch of DNA and copy it ...

Q 04/05

The heat-loving bacterium whose enzyme made PCR practical was first found in a hot spring of which national park?

A) Yosemite

B) Yellowstone

C) Hot Springs

D) Lassen Volcanic

Answer · why

B) Yellowstone

Thermus aquaticus came from Mushroom Spring in Yellowstone National Park, yet neither the park nor Wyoming has received any share of the profits from ...

Q 05/05

Károly Ereky, the agricultural engineer who coined the word 'biotechnology' in a 1919 book, came from which country?

A) Germany

B) Austria

C) Poland

D) Hungary

Answer · why

D) Hungary

Hungary was home to Ereky, who published the book in Berlin and served as Hungarian Minister of Food in 1919; he defined biotechnology as turning raw ...