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Doctors hope that one day the body’s master cells, called stem cells,

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lakshya14
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Re: Doctors hope that one day the body’s master cells, called stem cells, [#permalink] New post   13 Feb 2021, 06:02
AndrewN wrote:
lakshya14 wrote:
If doctors think something in the future will happen then why are we using past tense in the correct answer to make it parallel?

Hello, lakshya14. I understand your confusion, but you are overlooking the modal auxiliary can be, a construct that is used to project into the future—e.g., I hope our wrecked car can be salvaged. The correct sentence uses ellipsis to allow this can be to carry over into the other parallel entities: can be directed... [can be] used... and [can be] studied.

You might find this writeup on auxiliaries and modals to be of interest, although I would not recommend committing everything to memory. (You can get in over your head quickly if you dive into rules upon rules within grammar.)

I hope that helps. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew


Thanks for the reply, but I have a doubt regarding parallelism. Some question like this also, although in wrong answer in (A) has some adjectives or misfires before the parallel entity such as a verb. This sentence got me wrong because I tried to make it parallel with another entity which is not supposed to be parallel.
I tried to make "grow" be parallel to "use" and "study".

However, one more mistake I may be doing in this may be that the stem "can be directed to (grow), (use) and (study)" breaks before "study" because i it has "may" before study, and when we join it with the main stem it becomes "can be directed to may study", but if we eliminate "may it makes sense. I have seen few questions where the main parallel verb has modifiers before it, and I tend to skip them to check it whether it is parallel. Or may be it could be that I was getting those question wrong modifier were making a sense and I was just lucky to get them right even after skipping the modifiers

So, should we every time check the modifiers before the verb so that it makes sense with the main stem?
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Re: Doctors hope that one day the body’s master cells, called stem cells, [#permalink] New post   13 Feb 2021, 09:53
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lakshya14 wrote:
Thanks for the reply, but I have a doubt regarding parallelism. Some question like this also, although in wrong answer in (A) has some adjectives or misfires before the parallel entity such as a verb. This sentence got me wrong because I tried to make it parallel with another entity which is not supposed to be parallel.
I tried to make "grow" be parallel to "use" and "study".

However, one more mistake I may be doing in this may be that the stem "can be directed to (grow), (use) and (study)" breaks before "study" because i it has "may" before study, and when we join it with the main stem it becomes "can be directed to may study", but if we eliminate "may it makes sense. I have seen few questions where the main parallel verb has modifiers before it, and I tend to skip them to check it whether it is parallel. Or may be it could be that I was getting those question wrong modifier were making a sense and I was just lucky to get them right even after skipping the modifiers

So, should we every time check the modifiers before the verb so that it makes sense with the main stem?

You said it yourself, lakshya14. You may have wanted the original sentence to work, but then the may before the third action ruptures the parallelism, and that does, in fact, give us a compelling reason to eliminate it. You cannot ignore a known deficiency because you like some other part of the sentence. That is a surefire way to never progress in SC beyond a certain point. If you find yourself in that 50/50 territory and you have a gut reaction that some aspect of one answer is "off" while the other smooths that area over, then go with that other answer, even if you prefer part of the first answer. Yes, you should check modifiers and verb tenses to make sure everything matches up, and you should consider these grammatical aspects within the larger context of the entire sentence. You never know when some part of the non-underlined portion may provide a clue that will help with parallelism or meaning.

- Andrew
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Re: Doctors hope that one day the body’s master cells, called stem cells, [#permalink] New post   13 Feb 2021, 23:26
Doctors hope that one day the body’s master cells, called stem cells, can be directed to grow in organs or tissues appropriate for transplant, use them to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and may study them to gain insight into basic human biology.

KEY is ...cells can be directed....can be used....and can be studied...PARALLELISM

(A) transplant, use them to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and may study them

(B) transplant, using them to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and (can be) studied

(C) transplant, (can be) used to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and (can be) studied

(D) a transplant, use them for testing drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and for studying

(E) a transplant, (can be) used to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals,and may study them

C is perfect
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Re: Doctors hope that one day the bodys master cells, called stem cells, [#permalink] New post   03 Oct 2023, 03:45
Doctors hope that one day the body’s master cells, called stem cells, can be directed to grow in organs or tissues appropriate for transplant, use them to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and may study them to gain insight into basic human biology.

Option elimination -

(A) transplant, use them to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and may study them - the reference of them is wrong. It can refer to organs or tissue - wrong.

(B) transplant, using them to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and studied - comma + ING acts as an adverbial and goes back to the main subject (so nothing wrong in the usage) but when compared with C, the parallelism is conveyed better. Moreover, it seems the use of master stem cells to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals is an important use, putting it in the commas makes it nonessential, which can be eliminated.

(C) transplant, used to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and studied - perfect parallelism.

(D) a transplant, use them for testing drugs and potentially toxic chemicals, and for studying - the reference of them is wrong. It can refer to organs or tissue - wrong. Also, parallelism is broken.

(E) a transplant, used to test drugs and potentially toxic chemicals,and may study them - the reference of them is wrong. It can refer to organs or tissue - wrong. Also, parallelism is broken.
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Re: Doctors hope that one day the bodys master cells, called stem cells, [#permalink]
03 Oct 2023, 03:45
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