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CCH L. D ebrn Ln

October 3, 1973

Dr. R.A. Brink

Department of Genetics

The University of Wisconsén
Genetics Building

Madison, Wisconsia 53706

Dear Alex,

I am really grateful to you for sending me these fascinating
tidbits. I would wish I could find more material that was directed to
the philosophical currents of genetics at that time, but inevitably
the kind of personal comment that appears in the correspondence you
have been showing me must have played the larger role in evaluating
a candidate for a faculty position. Hwwever, I think I have enough
material now from other sources to round out the picture of attitudes
of contemporary biologists to the introduction of Avery's ideas.
Sewall Wright has been particularly helpful.

I was, of course, aware of considerable skepticism in 1946/1947,
and even later, but I never had any hint that anyone had any difficulty
in repeating my experimental findings. Since those experiments are now
done daily in high school laboratory exercises, it would be rather
remarkable if anyone failed, at least using material that I could have
furnished. I suspect that the referee quoted in your letter had received
Ais information second or third hand and that theoretical sakepticisa had
become uncorrectly translated into failure of confirmation,

My reference to Cole was based on his 1916 article. You are giving
me useful information in your remark about his not having expressed
any further interest.

I was interested to read about your work on developing « series
of opaque mutants and it seems to me a persuasive approach, especially
since partial inhibitions of specific protein synthesis may give the most
productive compromises between yield and amino acid composition of the
entire seed. I was also very much pleased to see that you had been going
after Peter Carlson and share your disappointment in his immobility.

Another line that I have in mind for theoretical consideration is
to look more closely at the amino acid sequences of homologous proteins
in the seeds of genetically related species. By luck one might find,
for example, that the proximal portion of one protein, and the distal
portion of another are the sequences which are relatively rich in essential
amino acids. Then one might push hard eat intra-genic recombinastdn as a
way of optimizing the product with respect to human nutrition. One could,
of course, also contemplate a variety of mutational approaches but the
screening aspects of this would pose obvious difficulties and one probably
would want to have the technical advantages of methods like somatic cell
fusion and segregation to make the work follow a tolerable pace.

DINING
Dr. R.A. Brinck ~2 = 10/3/73

I am enclosing a couple of documents, not remembering whether I
had sent them to you before, which bear on the fumediate history of
bacterial recombination.

Yourg,as ever,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr
Enclosure