THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY

RUTGERS

Center for Agricultural Molecular Blology » Cook College
P.O. Box 234 » New Brunswick » New Jersey 08903 « U.S.A. * 204/932-8165
Fax: 201/932-6535

 

 

July 21, 1988

Professor Joshua Lederberg
Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue

New York, NY 10021

Dear Josh:

Thanks for your note dated July 5 received here July 12
while I was on vacation. I was intrigued by your attempt to
clear up some loose ends and like your idea of rummaging in the
attic to find old treasures. I can’t help you much in this
instance.

1. The Bombardia story, so far as I can tell, was not taken
further after Jean Mathieson. Esser and Kuenen in their
book on Genetics of Fungi (1967) have a section on
polarized segregation of non-homologous chromosomes, or
affinity, but don’t deal with this instance. They do,
however, cite other papers by Zickler (see copies of pp.
122 and 261) from their book. Since one of these was
from 1952, it suggests that he survived the war! You
Ms might try contacting Karl Esser at Ruhr-Universitat
of Bochum, Germany. He may well have information on

Zickler. I have also written to John Fincham whose
encyclopedic knowledge of these things may reveal
something of interest.

2. Solopathogenic or diploid sporidia in Ustilago maydis
result from failure of meosis. This can be readily
detected by plating teliospores. You will find a note of
the frequency (0.26 - 0.43%) of unreduced diploids among
two samples of smut from a farm crop in my book,

Day, PR: Genetics of Host Parasite Interaction (1974), p. 75.

3. On page 69 of the same book you will find a reference to
differences between reciprocal crosses in Puccinia
graminis ayvenae described by Green and McKenzie (1967).
On pages 86 and 87 there is some speculation about the
possible role of fungal viruses in bringing about these
effects. Johnson helped to supervise a Birmingham
Ph.D. student named Adrian Newton during my early days
at the Institute who tested for the presence of double-

 

A New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology Center
stranded RNA in a range of rust isolates in an attempt
to correlate this with physiologic race or pathogenecity
type on different cereal cultivars. The results were
negative.

Jean Mathieson is married to George Mayo who was at the
University of Adelaide. They both retired several years
ago, but I assume that a letter to her, care of the
Genetics Department of the University, would be
forwarded and might uncover some more information.
Another possibility is George Bistis who recently
retired from Drew University but who still has an office
in the Department of Botany.

I am sorry I missed you at the Waksman Institute celebration

of severa

Best

l months ago when I was out of town.

regards.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Day
Director

Enclosure
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