SECTION 5 Short Passages

As the book progresses, you will be asked to read short, interesting paragraphs to find main ideas and topic sentences. Once you are comfortable with these basic skills, proceed to the passages in the last five sections. This is where you will use your skills to tackle longer passages. 

In this section, you will find short (one and two paragraph) passages, accompanied by questions that ask you to identify explicit information, analyze, and interpret what is written. This is your first chance to use everything you ve learned so far. Pay special attention to the details and the facts, and make a habit of trying to identify the author s main idea also, try to think of the author s motive for writing the passage. As newspaper reporters do, ask the questions, Who What When Where How and Why Is the author s purpose to inform you of facts, persuade you of something, or simply to entertain you ... 

It has been reported that the plasmid vector is unable to translocate to the nucleus unless complexed in the cytoplasm with nuclear proteins possessing NLS. NLS are short karyophilic peptides on proteins that bind to specific transporter molecules in the cytoplasm, mediating their passage through the pore complexes to the nucleus. Examples of these peptides will be given later in this section. DNA can also be presented to cells in culture as a complex with polycations such as polylysine, or basic proteins such as protamine, total histones or specific histone fractions (110), cationized albumin, and others. These molecules increase the transfection efficiency. In addition histone HI is identified as transfection-enhancing protein in cell culture (111). 

These questions are the toughest, and most time-consuming, questions you ll encounter in the Writing section. You ll be asked about ways in which a rough draff of a short essay can be improved. Don t worry so much about what the passage says your job is to choose the best ways to improve how it says it. 

---