河南嵩县高考英语二轮阅读理解演练1及答案.docVIP

河南嵩县2016高考英语（二轮）阅读理解演练（1）及答案 阅读理解解读 Expensive perfumes (香水) come in tiny bottles, but many hide a whale-sized secret. To perfect a particular smell, perfume-makers often use an ingredient that comes from sperm whales, called ambergris. But using ambergris, which helps a perfume last longer, is strongly opposed by many people who think it is wrong to kill whales just so we can smell sweet. Joerg Bohlmann is neither a perfumer nor a whale expert. Hes a plant biologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada. But his discovery of a new plant gene (基因) might push whales out of the perfume business. The gene comes from fir trees, found throughout North America and commonly used as Christmas trees. The trees produce a chemical that can be used in perfume in place of ambergris—but with_a_catch. “Theres a problem that many people wouldnt consider. In the tree, the chemical is mixed with many others. That makes separation a challenge，” Bohlmann says. “Its like trying to isolate sugar from a biscuit.” This is where science becomes useful. When Bohlmann learned that fir trees produce the ambergris-like chemical, he decided to use his gene know-how to find the instructions for how to make the ambergris-substitute. Bohlmann found that gene and took it out of the tree cells. Then he did something that might sound strange to someone who doesnt work in genetics: Bohlmann put the gene from the tree into yeast (酵母) cells. Yeast may sound familiar because its used to make things like bread, wine and beer. Biologists like to work with yeast because it easily adopts new genes and changes its features and behaviour. When Bohlmann put the fir tree gene into the yeast, the yeast started making the same chemical that had been produced by the tree. Perfumers pay big money for ambergris because it is a fixative, which means it holds a smell in place on a persons body. “Cheap perfumes smell good in the first hour or so and then everything is gone，” explains Bohl