January 7, 1955

Dr. Joseph Lein

Director, Microblolggical Research
Bristol Laboratories

Syracuse 1, N.Y.

Dear Joe:

I was interested and pleased to have your letter of December 28th.
This is the situation on our current program on actinomgcete genetics.

About three years ago, I did some preliminary experiments, making
auxgtrophic mitants of S. griseus and putting them together. I had been
provoked by Klieneberger-Nobel's claims that the aerial mycelium was
diploid, and presumahly of heterogamous origin. I could find no support
fownthhég but did get some prototrophic combinations whose extrem in-
stability suggested that they were heterokaryons. Other matters becames
more pressing, and I put the problem aside temporarily until we could
accomodate a fellow to work full time on ths problem. These observations
were never published except as fleeting, incidental references.

Last September, Dr. S. G. Bradley won a postdoctoral fellowship ami
began his work here on that problem. He has reproduced the earlier fin-
dings with new material and is just getting to the point where he can
begin to analyze them in more detail. There are beginning to be some
hints of more stable combinations (recombinants?) as well as the unstable
"heterokaryons", but more markers are being put in to try to verify this.

As you see we are then already deeply involved in the academic aspects
of just the problem you mentioned, and are doing our best to get the answers
on the fundamentsh& of the life cycle.

Dr. Bradley's fellowship is from the National Research Council, and

is designated as "F1li Lilly & Co." Of course, this has no bearing whatever
on the research program that Bradkey is working on, and we have had no con-
tact whatever with Eli Lilly & Co. through this channel. As a university
laboratory, we cannot maintain confidentdal channels of any kind, and our
research results will be comnunicated exclusively through open vehicles of
scientific publication. You know all this, of course. Dr. Bradley is now
applying for renewal for next year; while it is hardly conceivable that he
will be unsuccessful through the National Research Council, if this should
happen (and fellowships are sometimes capricious) we probably would want
to pursue your suggestion of comparable support from your comnany.
There are some potential ptoblems connected with private consultantship,
but I would be happy to comaider it further. I am not connected with any
of your competitors any more than I am already with yourself. If my value
to you as a consultant would depend on a direct application of the not yet
published results of our own research, I could not faitby enter into a con-
fidential liasion with any single firm. I think I could consult for you on
either of the following bases: 1) (rather unlikely] that the consultation
was not confidential, but on the same basis as consultation between open
laboratories so that it could be transmitted freely, or 2) that it did not
rely upon our own research results pricr to their ptblication. If 2) applied,
its effect would be that I could not at present consult on a program of
recombination analysis in actinomycetes that was related to our own, if
that consultation were exclusive.

With best regards,

Joshua Lederberg

Professor of Genetics