2011年河海大学考博英语真题

Biologists have spent much of the past century taking cells apart to figure out what makes them tick. Adam Arkin, a physical chemist who divides his time between the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, has a goal to create a computer model of how the cell works so that someday he’ll be able to design his own cells from scratch.

It’s a daunting task. A single enzyme in a liver cell may be controlled by as many as 14 different regulatory processes. Multiply that by thousands of interconnected chemical reactions operating simultaneously in billions of cells, and you’ve got one incredibly complex system.

Enter a computer program called SPICE (Simulation Program for Integrated Circuit Evaluation), developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1970s. SPICE allowed engineers to analyze their electronic circuits and predict, more or less accurately, how they would work before they were actually built. There would always be problems to iron out, but at least the program pointed chip designers in the right direction.

Arkin is developing a similar program he calls bio/SPICE that he hopes will do for the cell what SPICE did for the chip. His first targets are simple bacteria. “They’re still complicated enough that we get depressed,” Arkin admits with a laugh. But he has already had some success grouping reactions together by the kinds of jobs they do. And, sure enough, some of them bear a remarkable resemblance to the gates and switches of an electronic circuit.

Of course, no one knows for sure whether Arkin or anyone else will be able to develop a working computer model of the cell. But it’s the sort of project that could keep scientists busy for another 100 years.

61. In the first paragraph, “… what makes them tick …” means _______.

A. why something operates as it does

B. what makes cells thick and then block in blood streams

C. what cells consist of

D. how cells are born and die

62. What do we learn from the passage?

A. What Arkin intends to achieve is unprecedented.

B. Arkin has just followed the past biologists’ footprints and nothing new

C. Arkin, based on the work of others, wants to build a computer model of his own

D. To design one’s own cells is what biologists have dreamed of for almost a century.

63. Which of the following adjectives can best describe the task Arkin is engaged in?

A. Challenging.

B. Delicate.

C. Simple.

D. Depressing.

64. How is Arkin getting on with his work?

A. Getting nowhere.

B. Getting somewhere.

C. There is a bigger breakthrough.

D. There is a remarkable resemblance found in his research.

65. What is the author’s attitude towards Arkin’s research?

A. Suspicious.

B. Positive.

C. Negative.

D. Indifferent.

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