THE RICE INSTITUTE

HOUSTON, TEXAS

October 2h, 1952

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Dept. of Genetics
Univ. of Wisconsin
Madison 6, Wisconsin

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

You are to be congratulated on your clear exposition
of the symbiotic relationship between bacteria and viruses
in the chapter you wrote for Werkman and Wilson's Bacterial

Physiologye

in this connection, I should like to call your attention
to an article which I wrote several years ago on the "Viroid
Theory", a mimeographed copy of which I am enclosing. To
my knowledge this article contains the first clear statement
of a wide-spread symbiotic relationship between bacteria and
micro-organisms related to viruses, organisms that I have
terned "viroids".

I assume that you mst have overlooked this article,
since you make no reference to it. I can easily understand
this, since the article appeared in the American Naturalist,
a journal not specifically devoted to micro-biology, and
the article appeared at a time when many biologists were
not yet even prepared to admit that viruses were organisms,
let alone that related organisms might be symbients of
universal occurrence.

Yours sincerely,

Edgar A. Altenburg