Letter to JL from Roger Stanier

[refers to a query about Ferdinand Cohn's "Schizomycetes"; Andre Lwoff]

Institut Pasteur                     7.ii.1974

Dear Joshua:

     Enclosed is a copy of Andre's and my publicity effort for the
Pasteur anniversary.

     In answer to your question about the general acceptance of
Cohn's assertion -- both with respect to bacteria and to blue-green
algae -- it seems to me that the answer is fairly simple.  In
eukaryotic algae, fungi and protozoa, simple microscopic observations
very early revealed phenomena of various kinds -- conjugation, gamete
release and fusion, production of structurally distinctive zygotes --
which could be more or less unambiguously interpreted as concomitants
of a sexual process.  Hence it was evident that at least some members
of these assemblages were capable of undergoing sexual reproduction.
It was the failure of microscopists to observe comparable phenomena in
any representatives of the bacteria & the green algae which led to
the dogma of asexuality.  To this should be added, of course, that
the analysis of sexual processes in eukaryotes led to the
establishment of a certain idea of the nature of sexuality which made
it no doubt very difficult to entertain the possibility that bacteria
might handle matters differently.  I think there is an analogy here
to the difficulty of accepting the notion of a bacterial
photosynthesis which didn't conform to the rules of the game in
plants.  Once natural laws of wide validity are established, there's a
natural tendency to treat them as universal.

     All the best from Germaine & myself.

                                                  Roger