BIOLOGISTS

This topic has expert replies
Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 234
Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2010 7:28 pm
Location: chennai
Thanked: 5 times
Followed by:4 members

BIOLOGISTS

by pappueshwar » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:46 pm
Biologists believe that they have found one of the substances that tell individual genes both when to become active and when to remain quiescent in the earliest phases of an embryo's development.

(A) tell individual genes both when to become active and when to remain
(B) tell individual genes both at which time they should become active or should remain
(C) tells individual genes both when to become active or remain
(D) tells individual genes both when to become active or when to remain
(E) will tell an individual gene both about when it should become active and remain

OA IS A

A) I understand that C is incorrect since it does not use the idiom " both X and y".
B) But then in answer choice A why should we use "tell" , "one of the substances is singular so cant we use "tells" ? of course answer choice A follows the idiom "both X and Y" and hence it is correct.


thanks
Source: — Sentence Correction |

User avatar
Legendary Member
Posts: 1239
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:25 am
Thanked: 233 times
Followed by:26 members
GMAT Score:680

by sam2304 » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:43 pm
This is how it works. Remember this.

One of the X + that/who + plural verb

One of the X + singular verb

when we don't have a that/who followed by the noun then it should be singular.

For our case it is the first one, so we should use plural verb 'tell'

Hope this helps !!
Getting defeated is just a temporary notion, giving it up is what makes it permanent.
https://gmatandbeyond.blogspot.in/

Legendary Member
Posts: 2789
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:19 am
Location: Chennai, India
Thanked: 206 times
Followed by:43 members
GMAT Score:640

by GmatKiss » Tue Mar 20, 2012 8:29 am
Biologists believe that they have found one of the substances that tell individual genes both when to become active and when to remain quiescent in the earliest phases of an embryo's development.

(A) tell individual genes both when to become active and when to remain
(B) tell individual genes both at which time they should become active or should remain
(C) tells individual genes both when to become active or remain
(D) tells individual genes both when to become active or when to remain
(E) will tell an individual gene both about when it should become active and remain

• Page 1 of 1