ROTHAMSTED EXPERIMENTAL STATION, HARPENDEN, HERTS, ENGLAND.
Director: F. C. BAWDEN, M.A., F.RS. JUL 15 1965

 

Telegrams:
REF. HARPENDEN 4671

Lith July 1965

Dear Lederberg,
I very much enjoyed your article "Signs of Life" in Nature
last week and hope you will send me a reprint,

It was particihlarly valusble to have the inadequac, ot our
methods of measuring optical activity stressed. I have been naggin, physicists
about this for years and hope you will be more successful in getting taem
interested than I have been.

Apropos of the e.clusion of so many possible amino acids from
proteins,eg a amino butyric acid as you say, has anyone ever tried making
polymers from them ? Doty made polymers from mixtures of D and L normal
amino acids and found the mixed ones less stable than these that were
stereo-homogeneous. Someone should be encouraged to make all-L polymers
of single non-protein amino acids or mixtures of them to see if there is
anything unusual about their properties. I suspect there wont be and that
thekr exclusion is just a matter of biological tradition here. But it would
be interesting to know.

Yours sincerely

BU Pece

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