D+ Cult

April 9, 1975

Dr. Le pat
The Réckkfeller University

East 66th Street and York Avenue
New York, New York 10021

Dear Ed,

I was very much interested to see your paper with Mishra and Niu
in the February PNAS. Among other things you may recall that my first
effort in real science was the unsuccessful attempt that Francis Ryan
and I made to demonstrate transformation in Neurospora,

During the years we have maintained some contact with the general
problem, and I thought you would be either amused or interested to have
some of the enclosures. We are not actively working on this at the
present time although from time to time we do contemplate looking to
see what would happen with RNA DNA complexes with or without stitching
them together.

Enclosed also is a pre-print of our current work to illuminate the
point I {just made.

By chance I happened to have received a reprint from Shen San-Chuin
in 1962 and as you seemed to know of this work only by indirect reference,
I thought you would like to have a copy, one of which is enclosed. Together
with it is some discussion I have had about the problema of identifying
Chinese names which this illustrated when I attempted to look it up in
some of the indexes.

What do you make of tha RNA result?! Do you have any other evidence
of the working of a reverse transcriptase in Neurospora? Will you yourself
be pursuing this matter any further?

Norton Zinder told me that you were out here in the general area
not very long ago; I would certainly like to have a chance to see you
again and if such an opportunity should arise, please do let me know
so that we have a way to get together. I would also Particularly like you
to have a chance to meat our new daughter (who is just 11 months old now!).

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
ae ure Professor of Genetics