A bite of a cookie containing peanuts coul

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问题:

A bite of a cookie containing peanuts could cause the airway to constrict fatally. Sharing a toy with another child who had earlier eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich could raise a case of hives. A peanut butter cup dropped in a Halloween bag could contaminate the rest of the treats, posing an unknown risk.

These are the scenarios that "make your bone marrow turn cold" according to L. Val Giddings, vice president for food and agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Besides representing the policy interests of food biotech companies in Washington, D. C., Giddings is the father of a four-year-old boy with a severe peanut allergy. Peanuts are only one of the most allergenic foods; estimates of the number of people who experience a reaction to the beans hover around 2 percent of the population.

Giddings says that peanuts are only one of several foods that biotechnologists are altering genetically in an attempt to eliminate the proteins that do great harm to some people’s immune systems. Although soy allergies do not usually cause life-threatening reactions, the scientists are also targeting soybeans, which can be found in two thirds of all manufactured food, making the supermarket a minefield for people allergic to soy. Biotechnologists are focusing on wheat, too, and might soon expand their research to the rest of the "big eight" allergy-inducing foods: tree nuts, milk, eggs, shellfish and fish.

Last September, for example, Anthony J. Kinney, a crop genetics researcher at DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, Del., and his colleagues reported using a technique called RNA interference (RNAi) to silence the genes that encode p34, a protein responsible for causing 65 percent of all soybean allergies. RNAi exploits the mechanism that cells use to protect themselves against foreign genetic material; it causes a cell to destroy RNA transcribed from a given gene, effectively turning off the gene.

Whether the public will accept food genetically modified to be low-allergen is still unknown. Courtney Chabot Dreyer, a spokesperson for Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont, says that the company will conduct studies to determine whether a promising market exists for low allergen soy before developing the seeds for sale to farmers. She estimates that Pioneer Hi-Bred is seven years away from commercializing the altered soybeans.

Doug Gurian-Sherman, scientific director of the biotechnology project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest—a group that has advocated enhanced Food and Drug Administration oversight for genetically modified foods—comments that his organization would not oppose low-allergen foods if they prove to be safe. But he wonders about "identity preservation" a term used in the food industry to describe the deliberate separation of genetically engineered and no nengineered products. A batch of nonengineered peanuts or soybeans might contaminate machinery reserved for low-allergen versions, he suggests, reducing the benefit of the gene-altered food. Such issues of identity preservation could make low-allergen genetically modified foods too costly to produce, Chabot Dreyer admits. But, she says, "it’s still too early to see if that’s true. \

According to the text, foods have been genetically altered to()

A. taste more delicious

B. to cure people’s ineffectiveness in immune system

C. to promote sales of peanut

D. to lower the chance to get allergy

考点:普通考研西医综合西医综合
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毒扁豆碱用于青光眼的优点是()

A.比毛果芸香碱作用强大而且持久

B.毒副作用比毛果芸香碱小

C.水溶液稳定

D.不易引起调节痉挛

E.不会吸收中毒

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目前,修补铸件缺陷应用最广的方法是()。

A.金属液熔补法

B.堵塞和浸渍法

C.焊补修补法

D.压入塞子

题型:单项选择题

功率因数是指电动机从电网中吸取的有功功率和()的比值。

A、视在功率

B、励磁电流

C、无功功率

D、谐波

题型:单项选择题

上腹部CT检查口服稀释的阳性对比剂的作用是()

A、增加图像对比度

B、显示胃肠道内病变

C、显示总胆管下端阳性结石

D、增加胆囊及胆道系统密度

E、使胃肠道充盈,与欲观察部位鉴别

题型:单项选择题

表面活性剂溶解度下降,出现浑浊时的温度

A.HLB
B.Krafft点
C.昙点
D.CMC
E.杀菌和消毒

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