VETERANS ADMINISTRATION
HOSPITAL
ALBANY, NEw YoRK

 

August 24, 1960

YOUR FILE REFERENCE:

IN REPLY REFER TO:

.or, Esther Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford University
Stanford, California

Dear Esther:

I have tested the strains you gave me: Gal é (W4221-820) and Gal
(W3805), Gal, was not tested for accumulat?on because it turned 6ut
to be Gal-pos%tive upon plating, Gal, accumulates large amounts of
galactose and a fair amount of g—meth+?-galactoside, You can see in
the enclosed table what a fair amount means,

The results of accumulation in a series of galactose—negative mutants
is given in the enclosed table, A relationship between B-methyl-
galactoside accumulation and the B cistron could exist, Gall, 4, 6,
and 7 accumulate less B-methyl-galactoside than the others, although
values of less than 20 CPM are not very significant, If the methyl-
galactoside permease is associated with the transferase, one would
expect Gal 3 and 9 to have very little permease also, Nevertheless,
Gal, has about 30% of the Gal parent strain, Before reaching any
con@lusions, it will be necessary to know the exact amounts of
transferase in these strains, Larry's mutants 3101, 3102, 3103, etc,,
were used, except for Gal, which was W677. (Does Gal. belong to
cistron EB?) . You will notice that Gal 3, 5, and 9 aidnot grow on
Davis' medium and to obtain good growth 0,2% tryptone was added,
(luria's method which, according to him, does not affect induction, )

Just a few days ago, it occurred to me that perhaps the isogenic strain
W3110 was also poor in the B-methyl-galactoside permease, As you can
see in the table, it accumulates about a third of the amount in 2244,
These are mainly preliminary results, Some of the accumulation values
were obtained from single experiments, We will repeat the experiments
and I will let you know if there are basic differences, If you have
any new cistrons I will be very interested in testing them, I think
that cistron E, with Gals» should be tested further,

Did you receive the culture of reverted 4349?
Best regards to you and Josh,
Sincerely,

~ Povic

Boris Rotman

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