Question
Through experimenting designed to provide information that will ultimately prove useful in the treatment of hereditary diseases, mice have received bone marrow transplants that give them a new gene.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
Sentence Analysis
- Through experimenting (Beginning prepositional phrase modifying the main verb)
- designed to provide information (Verb-ed modifier modifying ‘experimenting’)
- that will ultimately prove useful in the treatment of hereditary diseases, (Dependent clause modifying ‘information’ – Subject: that; Verb: will prove)
- mice have received bone marrow transplants (Main Subject: mice; Main Verb: have received)
- that give them a new gene. (Dependent clause modifying ‘transplants’ – Subject: that; Verb: give)
- designed to provide information (Verb-ed modifier modifying ‘experimenting’)
The sentence says that in certain experiments, mice have received bone marrow transplants. The experiments are designed to provide information that will eventually prove useful in the treatment of hereditary diseases.
The sentence has the following problems:
- The verb-ing ‘experimenting’ seems to take the subject ‘mice’ as its doer, leading to a nonsensical meaning that mice did the experimenting.
- Even if we replace ‘experimenting’ with ‘experiments’, we’ll still need to replace ‘through’ with ‘in’. The mice received transplants ‘in the experiments’, not ‘through the experiments’ (which means by the way of experiments).
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the problems mentioned above.
(B) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- Problem no. 2 of the original sentence
- Since the information will eventually prove useful, the verb ‘will prove’ should be used instead of the participle ‘proving’.
(C) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- The word ‘experimentation’, which means trying out new things, is much inferior to the word ‘experiments’ within the context of this sentence since we are not trying out new things but conducting experiments.
- The simple present tense verb ‘proves’ doesn’t convey the prospective nature of the action i.e. doesn’t convey that the information will prove useful in the future.
(D) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- Problem no. 1 of the original sentence
- Problem no. 2 of option B
(E) Correct.
If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask in the comments section.
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Hi CJ,
I am little confused about the usage of verb in this phrase.”information that will ultimately prove useful in the treatment”. I couldn’t understand how information can do the action proving something.
Assuming that verb “prove” is playing the role of linking verb in future tense form, can the phrase mean “information that will ultimately be useful in treatment”.
Pls. clarify
Ya. Here it seems to be acting as a linking verb. However, in general, information can ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ something. If you find information that many threatening messages were sent from a politician’s mobile to a witness, you can say that the data/information proves that the politician is trying to impact the case.
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