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Date: November 10, 1976

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Joshua Lederberg

1937-38 Course in Comparative Biochemistry

Gries é
As this was mentioned so strongly by Regnery - and was also mentioned by Giea~—-
I tried to track down some record of it.

Not until 1942-43 is Tatum mentioned as being responsible for any course in
biology and at that time there is a cross-reference to Chemistry 245 with no
specific listing in Biology!

Nor is there any mention of such a course in the annual reports of the
department between 1937-39. The 42-43 notation lists the chemistry faculty
and under it "with the cooperation of E.L. Tatum, Assistant Professor of
Biology".

As Regnery had also talked a good deal about the Drosophila eye color hormone
work, I tried to get a clearer record on that and on the question of the
competition for priority. Ed's 1941 paper refers to Butenandt 1940 as having
anticipated him. Furthermore, Kikkawa also published in Genetics (paper sub-
mitted April 1941) on essentially the same subject including the isolation of
kynurenine.

Ephrussi 1942 recalls the accidental discovery of the bacterial production of
the hormone in the 1939 paper that I had overlooked. This certainly must have
reinforced Ed's fascination with comparative biochemistry (a bacterial product
functioning as an insect eye color hormone), with serendipity, and with the

use of pathway analysis as Butenandt did as an easy approach to the delineation
of biochemical intermediates. All this would of course have jibed very easily
with Ed's previous work on nutrition.

Recall that Tatum's 1936 paper was on the identification of thiamine as a
bacterial vitamin. By 1936 we already have the review by B.C.J.G. Knight which
has an unimpeccable evolutionary outlook. At that time he was able to refer to
Schopfer's 1935 work on thiamine for phycomyces and he predicts that bacteria
will be found to have vitamin requirements but evidently Tatum's paper was the
first to establish that. A number of other bacterial requirements but none of
them vitamins had been established by that time. Also it had been shown that
some bacteria can synthesize vitamins.

(I don't know whether Johne's bacillus nutrition has been worked out - it is
an early example of syntrophismn.)

Knight's 1947 review may be helpful in illuminating the background of these
kinds of studies. And of course recall that Lwoff had been working on this
problem since the early 30's. Perhaps look at his Nobel Lecture. Fildes 1934
is credited with the idea that parasitism is caused by loss of enzymes
necessary to synthesize cell material. By 1945 the Peterson review could no
longer offer a historical perspective, it was so swamped with entries.

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