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lv Bacteriology Department
Melbourne University
Carlton N3, Vic.,~
' -- Australia

September 13, 1957

Dear Kim and Barbee:

Greetings from Australia, This must have been the only part of the
western Pacific that you didn't get to see during the whirlwind last
apring. We hope everything: is going well now with all of you and with
the lastborn,

7 It would be hard to give you much colorful news of the world down

here. Australia nowadays is a long wags from the bushmen and the kangaroos
and the platypi, though to tell the truth, these all exist, and we are
trying our best to get into the country andsee some of them. Melbourne

is a sprawling city of over a million, something of a hybridbetween
Edinburgh and Philadelphia in its flavor. We have a rather plush flat

in the fashionable neighborhood of ®Sogth Yarra', overlooking the Yarra
“"River" and facing the municipal skyline. It is rather shookingly expensive,
but the best we good do on and for short notice. We will be down here as
“you know till the end of next month, Our plans for November are indecisive,
but we will Gervatnly be back home by end+Fovember, andpossibly a few weeks
"sooner,

oe. _The main point. of my uxting writing is to let you know informa rmally
that the machinery at Madison a propos your appdintment has by no means
stopped turing, though it was necessarily skowed down over the summer,
In fact, all substantial formalities have been completed, including the
‘approval of your faculty status both in the Genetics and the Medical Genetios
departmenta, The only significant hurdle now isthe assurance of funds,
and Dean Bowers and I have no serious doubt that thiswill be forthooming,
quite possibly within the next few weeks. If this works out as well as I
‘Gan reasombly hope, you will be receiving a formal tender from Bowers
before too long. I am sure that you are not going to make any decision
lightly, and you know well enough my own hopes in this direction. The terms
of any propoaal shouldbe at least as favorable as those we have already
discussed, To my own mind, this is really a marvelous opportunity, both for
‘Wisconsin and yourself, too good to turn down lightly.
So, when the matter comes to fruition, I hope you will let
me know most candidly of any remediable obstacles.

000000

Our trip here can't have been as novel an experience as yours,
but we did have quite a good time at Hawaii, Fiji and the Barrier
Reef before settling down. Much of August was spent in touring
and lecturing. Since the beginning of the month, we have been
settled here in Melbourne, and I have actually been getting down
to some experimental work here at Burnet's institute. His own
interests are veering gather sharply towards somatic genetics and
the mechanism of antibody productione# he is toying now with the
idea, for example, that the antibody response is the selective
increase of saxumkexkiys one particular gpecieas of lymphocyte
which already exists tand accounts for 'natural antibody'). My
own predilections are for a subeellular“dynamics. The hard nut
to crack is how induced tolerance achieves the loss of potency
to produce a given antibody on the part of every cell in the treated
host, without the presence of a humoral factor. Burnet would account
for this by the prenatal Suppression of the corrésponding clone
of cells, which is quite a clever notion. I haven't been able to
formulate a better one that doesn't conflict with the facts, es-
pecially since neither induced tolerance, nor the lack of it, seems
to be xxahumitkesdxmyx passively transmissible.

My own work here has been on flu virus. I've been riding herd
on the hypothesis that "incomplete virus" may be the yield from a
cell whose surface has been altered (either by excess virus or RDE
or periodate), the particles themselves thereby havéng a defective
skin; damage to contained RNA would be consequent. This seems to
be consistent with most of the data (ignoring a few embarrassing
features that none of the theories seem to be able to cope with.)
But it is something of a problem to design a really new experiment;
everytime I think of something, it's been done, and is usually
consistent with this particular approach. I haven't got to doing
any recombination experiments, mainly for still trying to think of
some better markers.

Pest ve
Jdshua Lederberg

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