THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
1335 H STREET, WASHINGTON §, D. C.

BACTERIOLOGY, HYGIENE
AND PREVENTIVE MEDICINE October 29, 1949

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
College of Agriculture

The University of Wisconsin
Madison, 6, Wisce

Dear Dre Lederberg:

Ido have other ampules of the coliform strain I sent you a few
days ago and will shortly mail you two more. This time I will
take greater care with the packaging of the little glass tubes
and hope you will receive them intact.

These cultures were put away eight years ago by the late

Dr» Alden Fe Rose In most of his werk, the culture was suspended
in milk, and I believe the drying agent was caleium chloride.

I know it was not silica gel. I do not believe that Dr. Roe

put his method on record.

There is work now going on in the department which seems to in-
dicate that under certain circumstances these coliform bacteria
cen be very significantly influenced by certain factors brought
to bear on them. I would not be surprised if you were to find
these cultures a little different from what they were supposed

to be when put away years ago. These come from a collection I
call "IDN", which means infectious diarrhea of the newborn.

br. Dulaney sent me six cultures from llemphis named Garrett,
icCoy, Byrd, Hinson, Terrell and Massey. I find that my records
show four of thewfermented lactose. The Garrett strain, after
four cays, had produced no more than 10% of gas end its colonies
on endo were smaller than the usual coliform and quite pale.
Within the period of observation, I did not note secondary colonies.
These cultures were only handled by myself and Dr. Roe and et that
time we were not distracted by a multitude of duties. I feel
reascnably sure the culture I have called Garrett is the one I
received from Nemphise Of course, in all work of this sort one
cannot rule out the possibility that somewhere along the line
Dr. Joshua Lederberg -2- Cetober 29, 1949

some mistake was madee I would be very much inclined, however,
to feel if this culture behaves in some unusual way, that it is

the result of its having been kept so long in this state of
suspended animation.

I shall be glad to hear from you at some future date what you
find out regarding these strains.

Cordially yours,

a :
Leland W. Parr
Professor of Bacteriology

LP :ms