September 15, 1954

Dear Bruca:

I write now in great haste and with a bad conscience for not having
replied sooner to yours of uly 27 (+). We were away on "holiday" most
of the summer: briefly at a symposium at the University of Michigan, then
at Woods Hole. Your letter was eventually forwarded to me there, but this
is the first moment (or half—momeat) I've had. We had a splendid tim at
Woods Hole, in a mixture of lazy work (at the library, and discussions with
the numerous geneticists in residence, viz. Watson—Crick, Ephrussi's, Sonne-
born, Moewus....) and industrious play at the beach. However, we were more
or less chased home by Hurricane "Carol" which did a lot of damage on Cape
God, mostly by weas from the storm tide. We were no sooner home than we had
to complete negotiations and move (ugh!) into a new home that we have finally
purchased. My brother Seymour helped us no end, but we still have not finished
installing the fumiture, unpacking clothing, etc. Then the Cavalli's arrived
on the day we moved, ani we are still looking, almost desperately for a place
for then to live. Bor some reason, housing has gotten mch tighter. But they
are the most charming of people, and we are delighted to have them as our house
guests in the fnterim. This is also the season of advising and registering dt
stents, ani planning an essentially new course in GOM (up to Know I'd been
catering primarily to the Bact. students who've not had auch genetics before,
and I want now to offer some thing a little more sophisticated for our om students).
All this by way of extenuation for whatever irrationality you may notice now,

To answer some of your more explicit questions that require the least dekibera-
tion, I have several times watched the division of a motile cells giving immediately
1 motile, 1 mon-motile daughter (immediately= within perhaps a second or less).

On other (rather vague grounds) I have also been concerned whether bacterial fis-
sion is mristic, or whether there is perhaps a mother-daughter polarity. You
will recall, for example the typically unipolar localization of formazan in tetra~
zolium treated cultures: it would be amusing to try to combine these experiments.

My first reaction to your suggestion that we start to write up the results now
was not enthusiastic, as I would prefer to wait until the whole picture became
clearer. But perhaps thers would be no disddvantage to a preliminary account, on
an essentially observational level: I would be opposed to too mach speculation until
the experiments were in sight to resolve the issues. May I suggest an account of
the scope of a er for the Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences here?
This would be ddd tLATI generally understood to be a preliminary agcotnt on a problem
whose ultimate seétlement was not in immediate view.

I did not fully understand your p- 2-— how do you distinguish E cells?
Is the special point of this experiment the demonstration (finally!) of
substantial trails from -icromanipulated cells trahsplanted to agar?
Yours, ‘too hasbsily,
Pi SALI
Joshua Lederber g