THE BRONX HOSPITAL

FULTON AVENUE ar 169TH STREET

NEW YORK 56, NEW YORK

LUpLow 8-7000

Bebruary 3, 1950

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Dept. of Genetics
University of Wisconsin
Madison 6, Wisc.

Dear Doctor Lederberg:

Under separate cover, I am sending you 7 more cultures as possible sow
ces for variants. We have tried to select them as suggested by you. How- —
ver, as I told you before, our restricted facilities leave us no time to
check on these cultures. They are just pickings from well separated colo-
nies from primary stool plates. One of them probably belongs into the Pro-

teus group - it started " swarming". Please let me know, whether you want
more cultures of this kind.

fe gow Cte of f23,
/* Tt can only say, that we excluded the presence of a 'phage as well as

we knew how. Even if the phenomanon we observed would be initiated by a ' Dy
'phage, it would be of great interest - perhaps even more than any expla-
nation by a soluble principle. Imagine a phage forcing a culture to ac-
cept a constant biological property from a "donor" via a ‘phage and at the
same time abandoning the corresponding character it had carried hitherto]
However, in view of the difficulties we entountered in duplicating the
experiments, and also in view of the fact, that even in the positive ex-
periments only a fraction of the offspring showed transformation, I have
difficulties in visualizing such a possibility.

Your are entirely correct in stating that the problem is partly one
of definition. If a 'phage becomes just a roving gem, theh, of course, you
have me. But then I shal have my vengeance: I shall prepare a beautiful
paper for next year's Review of Microbiology jast by copying your and
exchanging each time }eammee the word genefor 'phage and vice versa.

After that, we are going to submit the case to the international congress
for semantics - or, if you prefer, to the U.S.Senate - for arbitration.

Sincerely .
AT. Weed
A.J Weil

 

AFFILIATED WITH FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROVIES OF NEW YORE