STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-2493

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
December 18, 1985

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
President's Office

The Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue

New York NY 10021

Dear Josh:

Good to hear from you. The Tatum memoir is thoughtful and
sensitive.

I'm afraid not much can be said about pdx (299), or about
pdx mutants in general. N. sitophila has been little used, and
linkage groups are not defined. I'm not aware of any evidence
for or against allelism of 299 with the single known pdx locus
in N. crassa, but the best bet would be that it is at the same
locus. All the known N. crassa pdx mutants have proved to be
alleles at the same locus, pdx-1, in linkage group IV. It would
be perfectly feasible to introgress 299 into crassa and do
allelism tests and mapping there, but no one has been motivated
to do so.

There is also no evidence to my knowledge of a pdx-specified
enzyme or gene product, either in Neurospora or Saccharomyces or
Aspergillus. Only a single pdx locus is known in yeast, two in
Aspergillus. In neither organism is the lesion identified.

Let me write down a few comments and thoughts regarding ELT,
not necessarily because they will be of any use for your memoir,
but because it has sparked my memory.

Ed was extremely kind and helpful to me as I got started at
Stanford. I felt almost as though I were part of his group, and
had good opportunity to observe his relations with his students
and associates. He was infinitely patient and kind, even with
the weaker students, whom he kept on with a sort of personal
sympathy and loyalty, trying to bring out their best. I think
he valued integrity above all. He was absolutely honest and
showed great care to spend grant funds carefully and thriftily.
He went to great length to avoid using his position to obtain
favors. For example, none of his students were allowed to apply
for N.I.H. Fellowships while he was on the panel handling then,
according to Dot.

Ed loved to do things in the lab with his hands, to build
equipment, etc. But his time to do so was shrinking during the
Stanford years at the same time that the bailing-wire and
sealing-wax approach, on a shoestring budget, which may have
typified earlier research periods, was becoming less and less
appropriate or necessary.
Perkins/Lederberg 12.16.85, P. 2

I think not much need or should be said about research
accomplishments at Stanford during the 1948-57 period. He hada
few excellent students (e.g. Adelberg, Fuller) and one very good
postdoc (Gross), but not as many good people as he deserved. He
became increasingly involved in activities outside the lab --
editing for J.B.C., national committees, etc. While he came
into the lab regularly, and consulted with Laura Garnjobst and
with the others, he found it increasingly difficult to carry on
experiments himself. I still remember his expression of
frustration when he had to go upstairs and read manuscripts or
undertake other chores that took him away from the lab. But it
was a choice he made. And he confessed that he enjoyed the
committees and panels that took him East.

I have wondered about one thing that isn't mentioned in your
memoir. Somewhere I obtained the picture that there was a
hiatus between Stanford and Yale in the 1940's, during which Ed
was at loose ends, and that the Tatums went to St. Louis during
this period when Ed was without a post, at Lindegren's
invitation. Is this just my imagination? Ed never told me of
this period, but I do know that the Tatums and the Lindegrens
were on close, friendly terms. Sometime in the 1950's, I went
with Ed and June to San Francisco -- probably to Bacteriology
meetings -- and watched the Tatums and Lindegrens during several
hours together. They were obviously old and warm friends.

On page 9 of your draft memoirs, it might be well to check
the papers on transformation. The earliest, preliminary
publication, not often cited, involved not only N.C. Mishra, but
also a Hungarian, Gabor Szebo, who was at Rockefeller when the
first experiments were done. (Szebo has extended the work in
recent years, at Debrecen.) Transformation was with DNA, not
RNA, I think you'll find. The inositol-independent segregants
did not segregate like Mendelian markers in crosses, and this
was one problem which contributed to lack of credibility at the
time.

It turns out now that meiotic instability and loss is
characteristic of Neurospora transformants. Neurospora can now
be transformed with high efficiency (as much as 10%). Transforn-
ation typically involves chromosomal integration, though usually
at nonhomologous loci. The transformants are relatively stable
mitotically, but are mostly unstable meiotically. So the
Mishra-Tatum observations weren't so out of line as they
originally seemed.
Perkins/Lederberg 12.16.85, P. 3

On. p.8, 4th paragraph, I would suggest omitting the clause
about rebuilding his personal life. Ed had some 16 years of
marriage to Viola before her death. Wouldn't a simple statement
suffice: that her death, which occurred the year before his
own, left him shattered?

Finally, one small point. On p. 6, line 18. Tatum didn't
have his own department. Substitute "group" or "lab?

Are you still projecting a book on the origins of one-gene
one-enzyme and the people involved?

Best wishes,

Suk

David Perkins
DDP/cmh