January 27, 1986
Dear Giorgio:
I am really disappointed to write and say that I cannot accept the invitation for the meeting in Crete in September. The program looks very exciting and unusual and I would very much like to be able to participate. Also, I have been hoping for an opportunity to meet Miklos, and this would have been a fine one. Finally, of course Crete would be marvelous at that time of year. But, we have planned for a long time to go directly from the FEBS meeting in Berlin at the end of August to visit with Amy, who will be spending a year in the middle east working on her doctoral thesis. In particular, she will have been in Istanbul from May on and she and Dan and I are counting on a visit in Turkey. Thank you very much for the invitation.
Thus far our efforts to identify a polypeptide encoded by the LINE-l sequence in teratocarcinoma cells have yielded nothing. Moreover, the cDNA clones from the poly A-cytoplasmic RNA from those cells look to be almost, though not quite, as big a mixture of sequences as the genomic LINE-1 sequences. They are a particular subset of the genomic sequences, but not all of them are coding as some have stop codons and other breaks in the open reading frame. But some may well be open throughout and we are now trying to make improved antibodies with long polypeptides made from the cDNA's in E. coli. It is turning out to be quite a struggle.
With best wishes to you and Gabriella and the children. We think often of your son in South Africa and wonder how things are going with him during these difficult days.
Sincerely
Maxine Singer