THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

pro bono humani generis
1230 YORK AVENUE - NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10021-6399

Laboratory of
MOLECULAR GENETICS AND INFORMATICS

July 7, 1995
L y

Dr. Sue Jinks-Robertson
Department of Biology
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Dear Dr. Jinks-Robertson,

_ Your recent paper "Association of increased spontaneous mutation rates with high
levels of transcription in yeast" was read by us with great interest. It is a valuable and
important accomplishment.

‘Thanks for sending a preprint via Bruce Levin. We would be grateful to receive
further preprints of your work in this area.

We have spent an agonizing period attempting analogous experiments in E. coli using
the lac system and IPTG induction. Bruce also has also experienced frustration with this

approach. The success of your system is especially poignant in the context of our own head
banging.

We are more committed to the question than to the organism, and even before your
important paper we were looking for strains of yeast appropriate to these issues. We would
be grateful to obtain from you the strains used in your Science paper. Our intention is first to
repeat your experiments and then to extend them in the directions of chemical mutagenesis.
We want to learn if in addition to spontaneous mutation, there is also an increase in
chemically induced mutagenesis associated with transcription.

Of coursé we will give full credit and thanks in reporting any work that utilizes your
strains. Neither are we looking for head to head competition; the area opened up in large
measure by your work promises to be large and fertile.

LN, Ped. Ayu

Joshua Lederberg David Thaler Ken Zahn