Question:
The development of synthetic biology has enabled scientists to engineer microorganisms to produce valuable chemicals and materials, potentially revolutionizing various industries. Nonetheless, this field raises complex ethical issues, such as the potential environmental impact of releasing engineered organisms into natural ecosystems and concerns over biosecurity. There is also debate about the long-term effects on biodiversity and the potential for unintended consequences.
What is one ethical concern related to synthetic biology mentioned in the passage?
The development of synthetic biology has enabled scientists to engineer microorganisms to produce valuable chemicals and materials, potentially revolutionizing various industries. Nonetheless, this field raises complex ethical issues, such as the potential environmental impact of releasing engineered organisms into natural ecosystems and concerns over biosecurity. There is also debate about the long-term effects on biodiversity and the potential for unintended consequences.
What is one ethical concern related to synthetic biology mentioned in the passage?
What is one ethical concern related to synthetic biology mentioned in the passage?
Show Hint
Focus on the specific ethical issues the passage highlights to identify the correct answer.
Updated On: Oct 6, 2025
- The high cost of synthetic biology research.
- Potential environmental impact and biosecurity concerns.
- The inability of engineered microorganisms to produce valuable chemicals.
- The lack of debate about biodiversity effects.
Hide Solution
Verified By Collegedunia
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
The passage describes synthetic biology as a promising field that enables microorganisms to produce valuable chemicals, which could transform industries. However, it emphasizes several ethical concerns associated with this technology:
Potential environmental impact: The release of engineered organisms into natural ecosystems may disrupt existing balances or cause harm.
Biosecurity concerns: There is worry about the misuse or unintended spread of engineered organisms, which could pose risks to safety.
Debate on biodiversity: Long-term effects on biodiversity and the risk of unintended consequences are also mentioned as ethical considerations.
Reviewing the answer choices:
(A) is incorrect because the passage does not mention the cost of research as a concern.
(B) is correct as it directly captures the environmental and biosecurity concerns discussed.
(C) is incorrect since the passage states engineered microorganisms \emph{can} produce valuable chemicals.
(D) is incorrect because the passage explicitly mentions ongoing debate about biodiversity effects.
Therefore, the best choice that reflects the passage’s ethical concerns is option B.
Potential environmental impact: The release of engineered organisms into natural ecosystems may disrupt existing balances or cause harm.
Biosecurity concerns: There is worry about the misuse or unintended spread of engineered organisms, which could pose risks to safety.
Debate on biodiversity: Long-term effects on biodiversity and the risk of unintended consequences are also mentioned as ethical considerations.
Reviewing the answer choices:
(A) is incorrect because the passage does not mention the cost of research as a concern.
(B) is correct as it directly captures the environmental and biosecurity concerns discussed.
(C) is incorrect since the passage states engineered microorganisms \emph{can} produce valuable chemicals.
(D) is incorrect because the passage explicitly mentions ongoing debate about biodiversity effects.
Therefore, the best choice that reflects the passage’s ethical concerns is option B.
Was this answer helpful?
0
0
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
For the past two years at FasCorp, there has been a policy to advertise any job opening to current employees and to give no job to an applicant from outside the company if a FasCorp employee applies who is qualified for the job. This policy has been strictly followed, yet even though numerous employees of FasCorp have been qualified for any given entry-level position, some entry-level jobs have been filled with people from outside the company.
If the information provided is true, which of the following must on the basis of it also be true about FasCorp during the past two years?- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Reading Comprehension
As an example of the devastation wrought on music publishers by the photocopier, one executive noted that for a recent choral festival with 1,200 singers, the festival’s organizing committee purchased only 12 copies of the music published by her company that was 5 performed as part of the festival.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the support the example lends to the executive’s contention that music publishers have been devastated by the photocopier?- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Reading Comprehension
- In the 1970s, two debates engaged many scholars of early United States history. One focused on the status of women, primarily White women. Turning on the so-called golden age theory, which posited that during the eighteenth-century colonial era, American women enjoyed a brief period of high status relative to their English contemporaries and to nineteenth-century American women, this debate pitted scholars who believed women’s lives deteriorated after 1800 against those who thought women’s lives had been no better before 1800. At issue were the causes of women’s subordination: were these causes already in place when the English first settled North America or did they emerge with the rise of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism?
The second debate, the so-called origins debate, concerned the emergence of racial slavery in the southern colonies: was slavery the inevitable result of the deep-rooted racial prejudice of early British colonists or did racial prejudice arise only after these planters instituted slave labor?
Although these debates are parallel in some respects, key differences distinguished them. Whereas the debate over women’s status revolved around implicit comparisons of colonial women to their counterparts in the antebellum period (1800--1860), thus inviting comment from scholars of both historical periods, the origins debate was primarily confined to a discussion about slavery in colonial America. Second, in contrast to the newness of the debate over women’s status and its continued currency throughout the early 1980s, the debate over race and slavery, begun in the 1950s, had lost some of its urgency with the publication of Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), widely regarded as the last word on the subject.
Each debate also assumed a different relationship to the groups whose histories it concerned. In its heyday, the origins debate focused mainly on White attitudes toward Africans rather than on Africans themselves. With few exceptions, such as Wood’s Black Majority (1974) and Mullin’s Flight and Rebellion (1972), which were centrally concerned with enslaved African men, most works pertaining to the origins debate focused on the White architects, mostly male, of racial slavery. In contrast, although women’s historians were interested in the institutions and ideologies contributing to women’s subordination, they were equally concerned with documenting women’s experiences. As in the origins debate, however, early scholarship on colonial women defined its historical constituency narrowly, women’s historians focusing mainly on affluent White women.
Over time, however, some initial differences between the approaches taken by scholars in the two fields faded. In the 1980s, historians of race and slavery in colonial America shifted their attention to enslaved people; interest in African American culture grew, thereby bringing enslaved women more prominently into view. Historians of early American women moved in similar directions during the decade and began to consider the effect of racial difference on women’s experience.- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Reading Comprehension
- The most plausible justification for higher taxes on automobile fuel is that fuel consumption harms the environment and thus adds to the costs of traffic congestion. But the fact that burning fuel creates these “negative externalities” does not imply that no tax on fuel could ever be too high. Economics is precise about the tax that should, in principle, be levied to deal with negative externalities:
the tax on a liter of fuel should be equal to the harm caused by using a liter of fuel.
If the tax is more than that, its costs (including the inconvenience to those who would rather have used their cars) will exceed its benefits (including any reduction in congestion and pollution).- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Reading Comprehension
- Objectively, of course, the various ecosystems that sustain life on the planet proceed independently of human agency, just as they operated before the hectic ascendancy of Homo sapiens. But it is also true that it is difficult to think of a single such system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture. Nor is this simply the work of the industrial centuries. It has been happening since the days of ancient Mesopotamia. It is coeval with the origins of writing, and has occurred throughout our social existence. And it is this irreversibly modified world, from the polar caps to the equatorial forests, that is all the nature we have.
- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Reading Comprehension
View More Questions
Questions Asked in GRE exam
- The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"Nosinia is an herb that many users report to be as effective as prescription medications at fighting allergy symptoms. Researchers recently compared Nosinia to a placebo in 95 men and women with seasonal allergies to ragweed pollen. Participants in the study reported that neither Nosinia nor the placebo offered significant relief. However, for the most severe allergy symptoms, the researchers reported that Nosinia was more effective than the placebo in providing relief. Furthermore, at the end of the study, participants given Nosinia were more likely than participants given a placebo to report feeling healthier. We, therefore, recommend using Nosinia to help with your severe allergy symptoms."- GRE - 2025
- Analytical Writing
- The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
“To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement. We must make listeners of these new residents. We could try playing music tailored to their tastes, but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music. Instead, we should change to a news and talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area.”
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.- GRE - 2025
- Analytical Writing
- The following appeared as a letter to the editor from the owner of a skate shop in Central Plaza.
"Two years ago the city council voted to prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. They claimed that skateboard users were responsible for litter and vandalism that were keeping other visitors from coming to the plaza. In the past two years, however, there has been only a small increase in the number of visitors to Central Plaza, and litter and vandalism are still problematic. Skateboarding is permitted in Monroe Park, however, and there is no problem with litter or vandalism there. In order to restore Central Plaza to its former glory, then, we recommend that the city lift its prohibition on skateboarding in the plaza."- GRE - 2025
- Analytical Writing
- “Claim: A person in authority should always encourage those under him or her to share their thoughts and ideas. Reason: A leader’s main goal should be to promote innovation and change.”
- GRE - 2025
- Analytical Writing
- “Color photography has eliminated the need for realism in artistic painting, in the opinion of a number of art scholars and artists. At the same time, many members of the art community still feel that realistic artwork is still valuable and worthwhile.”
- GRE - 2025
- Analytical Writing
View More Questions