DEPARTMENT OF BACTERIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
25 SHATTUCK STREET

BOSTON 15, MASSACHUSETTS

December 1, 1958

Dr. Joshua Lederberg

University of Wisconsin

College of wiedicine -

Department of Medical Genetics - Genetics Building
Madison, Wisconsin :

Dear Joshua:

I need hardly tell you how successful your lecture was and
how much we enjoyed having you here. While I still don't favor the cell-
selection hypothesis for antibody formation, you certainly presented a
} most provocative synthesis of facts and interpretation - and I am using
the word "provocative" in a most favorable sense,

The New England Journal of Medicine wonders whether you would
care to publish the lecture there, since it included a good deal of material
of medical interest, They have a much broader circulation than you might
2 expect for a journal with a provincial title. I imagine you would prefer
to find a less medical outlet, but I told them I would ask you in any case,

I forgot to mation that I had hoped to have an astronomer at our
home when you were there to stir up a discussion of your recent interest in
a field that is beginning to dominate the toy market. Unfortunately both
Donald Menzel and Freduipple were out of town.

To get down to more serious business: I have a graduate student,

Loretta Lambert, who is investigating someaspects of DAP deprival and trying
to find why DAP-less spheroplasts are much tougher than penicillir-induced
ones, It turns out that if one slows growth sufficientl- (e.g. with a sulfona-
mide) mutant 173-25 makes normal cell wall, and the first chemical analyses

3 indicate that it is making DAP, The simplest interpretation would be that
thisis a leaky mtant; but an independently isolated DAF auxtroph behaved
identically. If you have kept the DAP awstrophs that “you isolated a while
ago I would appreciate slants of them to see whether this is a general problem.
Il presume yours would be derived from the Kio strain of E. coli.

 

With warmest gerebings to you and Esther,

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