Insect entombed in fossilised amber for tens of millions of years have provided the key to creating a new generation of antibiotic drugs that (ability) 1. _______________ fight war on modern disease. (1)

Research over the past two years 2. ______________(uncover) an antibiotics that 3. _______________(ability)(kill) modern drug-resistant bacteria that 4. ______________(ability) (cause) potentially deadly diseases in humans. Present-day antibiotics 5. _________________(nearly all isolate) from micro-organisms that use them as a form of defence against their predators or competitors. But since the introduction of antibiotics into medicine 50 years ago, an alarming number 6._________________ (become) ineffective because many bacteria 7.______________(develop) resistance to the drugs. The antibiotics that 8._______________ (be) in use millions of years ago 9.______________(probability) (prove) more deadly against drug-resistant modern strains of disease-causing bacteria. (2)

Raul Cano of California Polytechnic State University 10. ___________(say) the ancient antibiotics 11._____________(be) successful in fighting drug-resistant strains of staphyloccus bacteria, a 'superbug' that 12.________________(threaten) the health of patients in hospitals throughout the world. He now 13._______________(intend) to establish whether the antibiotics 14._______________ (probability) (have) harmful side effects. (3)

A biotechnology company, Ambergene, 15._________________set up to develop the antibiotics into drugs. They hope that one ancient antibiotic molecule16. _______________(ability) (use) as a basis to synthesise a range of drugs. (4)

There17. _______________(be) several attempts to extract material such as DNA from fossilised life-forms but many 18.________________(subsequently show) to be contaminated. The fight against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, such as tuberculosis and staphylococcus, therefore,19. ______________ (probability) (help) by the discovery. (5)

However, even the discovery of ancient antibiotics 20.__________________(probability) (not halt) the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. Stuart Levy of Tufts University in Boston _________________(warn) that the bacteria 21. __________________ (eventually evolve) to fight back against the new drugs. "There 22.________________(probability) (also be) an enzymeout there that 23._____________(ability) (degrade) it. So the only way to keep the life of that antibiotic going is to use it sensibly and not excessively," he said. (6)

Adapted from Prehistoric Insects Spawn New Drugs by Steve Connor, printed in Insight into IELTS. 1999. Cambridge University Press.