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STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA (1505

 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics

(415) 497-3052 August 6, 1974

Professor G.F. Gause

Institute of New Antibiotics
Academy of Medical Sciences
Bolshaya Pirogovskay 11 Moscow

Dear Professor Gause,

I am sorry to have missed a chance to see you again if, as I could not,
you attended the last sessions of ACMR/WHO in June. (Martin Kaplan
may have told you the reason — a new daughter who is a great joy to my
wife and myself)

In particular, I wished to discuss with you your current views on macro-
mutants. Do you continue to get reproducible results with paracoli 5099,
of do you get sporadic effects that make it hard to settle whether conta-
mination is or is not the basis? I have not found papers from you later
than 1971 that would help bring me up to date on your current views.

One thought that has occurred to me, but might be quickly discounted, is
that the "macromutant" is a parasitic Bdellovibrio-like species, capable
of occasional mutation to a host-independent form (cf. R.J. Seidler and
M.P. Starr, J.Bact. 100:769-785, 1969).

I very much appreciated the cautions (in your 1968 review in Prog. Nucl.
Acids) about dogmatism. Your example about lysogeny was an apt one,

as you may know from my own work on this subhect (cf. Ann. Rev. Microbiol.
4:1-22, 1949; Genetics 38:51, 1953). The validity of observations on
macromutants certainly deserves to be settled on %n empirical basis,

not by allusions to miracles.

If your own data have not led to more definite conclusions since 1971,

I would be happy to offer certain additional Suggestions about alternative
approaches, but they depend on the reproducibility of occurrence of the
macromutants in your own laboratory.

Yours sincerely
: ( j vr

oshua Lederberg -
Professor of Genetics

 
   

JL/rk

LT. J. Pp. KENNEDY, TR. LARORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOCY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE