IM YOUR REPLY PLEASE QUOTE

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NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
CANADA

MARITIME REGIONAL LABORATORY

HALIFAX, N.S.
llth March 195%,

Dear Joshua,

I have, with considerable interést and - I confess - some

difficulty, read the revrints which you kindly sent me, and trust
I will be permitted to make the following comments, all releting
to "Cell genetics and hereditary symbiosis".

1.

In my experience, many agents which kill algae tend to bleach
them. I am therefore not impressed by arguments of certain
workers (quoted by you on ».407) that SM acts by destroying
chloroplasts and thereby rendering non-heterotrovhic cells
inviable.

I am not happy that, when a vhagotronh ingests a narticle, the
latter becomes intracellular in the strict sense of cytorlasmic
constituents. The mere fact that hunks of »crotein get
digested in food vacuoles while the rest of the cell resists
autolysis suggests this is perhaps a too simnle internvretetinn.
Hence the problems of a free-living cyanonhyte anxi»rus to

become an endosymbiont are by no means solved when it's been
swallowed (peal

I am not convinced that all blugish-green lumns are cyanonhyte
cells. The latter have, for one thing, Feulgen . sitive
material, as befits their cellular nature: they also have
highly characteristic pigments, reserve materials, etc. Unti'
the case has been made stronger, I pvrefer not to accent the
symbiotic nature of Peliaina, Gyanovhora, etc. without reservations.
(In the latter orgenism, I tried to get the blue xigment sut
with water followizg toluene treatment - but it didn't come, as
it does with most blue-green algae. )

(Terminology). I do not accent zooxanthellae, etc. as rhyto-
plankton (p.415).

The use of the word "chromogenic" needs sorting out between
Lederberg, J. (1952) Physiol. Rev. 32:406 1.16, and

Lederberg, E. (1952) Genetics 37:471 1.1.

Finally, while I am still in a carving mood, I hove you wil!

 

restrain Engelsverg & Davis (MGB 7,36) from using "autotronhic" for
their miserable little heterotrovhic bacteria. We vhycrldgists
will be phurious.

With best wishes to Esther,

Yours,

bye