October 1, 1976

Dr. Y. Hirota

National Institute of Genetics
Yata 1, 111 Misima,
Sizuoka-ken, JAPAN

Dear Yukinori,
This is about your manuscript on the peptidyl transferase mutant.

T am afraid that my warning to you that it would take me a long time
to do my duty has turned out to be correct, and I have only just now been
able to get back to dealing with this properly.

I am enclosing with this letter a copy of the review which I received
from Jack Strominger. This raises a number of interesting questions, both
with respect to the details of the manuscript and the intersection of your
findings with his own work. I am not in a position to really give a good
critical judgment on either point. But it seems to me that it really probably
would be a good idea if you and he could cooperate along the lines that he
suggests in submitting papers that may appear in the same issue either of
the Proceedings or of another journal.

If you agree to that, I will be glad to send the original copies of
your manuscript to him for final disposition. If not, then I will have to
find another reviewer for publication in the PNAS, and this will have to
take account of the criticisms that are included with the present letter.
So, I really do think that his suggestion is by far the most practical.
Jack himself is also a member of the PNAS, it would be easy for him to
facilitate the publication of these two articles.

Needless to say, if you do have other inetructions about the disposition
of these manuscripts, I will be happy to try to do what I can to follow your
own wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr
Enclosure