This passage was adapted from an article published
Competition to make computer chips smaller and, consequently, faster and more efficient has driven a technological revolution, fueled economic growth, and rapidly made successive generations of computers obsolete. Yet at the current rate of progress this march toward miniaturization will hit a wall by about 2010—for many, an unthinkable prospect. The laws are investigating a different molecular pattern maker: peptides, amino acid chains that are shorter than proteins.
The project grew out of Belcher’s doctoral research on abalone. Her research group discovered in the mid-1990s that a specific peptide causes calcium carbonate to crystallize into the structure found only in the tough abalone shell. From that discovery, Belcher and Hu, Belcher’s postdoctoral adviser at the time, realized that if they resembling accelerated evolution, they developed additional related peptides from those that had the initially promising characteristics.
Hu says that in order to use such a method to assemble a set of circuit-building tools it would be necessary to identify many additional organic compounds that bind to circuit-component materials. The group is making progress on that quest. As they have expanded their targets to 20 more semiconductor materials, their glue. It will take that kind of finesse at the nanoscale to produce selfassembling circuits.
What this question is testing
Anticipate
This is a Local Purpose question, so step back and ask: why are these specific sentences in the passage? What are they doing for the rest of the text?
The first sentence tells you that shrinking computer chips has been a huge deal for technology and the economy. The second sentence tells you that this whole process is about to slam into a wall — by about 2010 it just stops working with current methods. Together, these two sentences give you the stakes: a critical engine of progress is about to stall. That's exactly the problem Belcher and Hu's research is trying to solve, and the rest of the passage is about their approach.
Goal
Looking for an answer that captures the setup-the-stakes role. Common traps to watch for:
Answers that imply skepticism toward Belcher and Hu — none is mentioned
Answers that frame the sentences as an opposing view — they aren't a viewpoint, they're context
Answers that frame them as a testable hypothesis — they describe a fact (the wall) and stakes (why it matters), not a claim under investigation
Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.