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igo Celina

Please reply to the GENETICS BUILDING

July 5, 1957

Professor J.B.S? Haldane
Indian Statistical Institute
Calcutta, India

Dear Professor Haldane:

Your very gracious posteard has just arrived, and I am very appresiative
of your remarks. I'm sorry too that we did not get to see you in Lonion— I
did look for you at the tea at the Royal Society meeting on cytoplasmic inheri-
tance, but failed to make contact. We did not gst around to visit any of the
labs. except for Stocker and Spicer with whom we have been collaborating directly.

In any case, I hope you will have a happy and fruitful time at Calcutta,
the geopolatical overtones notwithstanding.

Nething would please me more than to be able to visit India some tine,
and you may have left yourself open to an imposition sooner than you had counted
on! In fact, the Lederbergs are leaving in a month for a three-month Fulbright
lecture tour in Australia, in large part a return visit to Professor Rubbo who
spent some months here in '53~'54; I am aleo looking forward to some experi-
mantal work on virus recombination in Burnet's institute.

We had already contemplated using the occasion for a return via India and
Europes. In fact, through the good offices of Hilary Koprowski, we have had
some correspondence with Khanolkar and Gopal~Ayengar at Bombay (the Cancer
Research Centra of the Atomic Energy Establishment.) This has hung fire, as
we have not been ready to makes definite coomitments, and I could not say whether

their expressed interest, and connected means, would go so far as to help
finance such a4 detour.

There are two diffiolties in the way of such a trip/ The more pressing
is whether I will have the time. A new department of Medical Genetics has just
been established, in hopes of improving the penetration of genetic thought into
medical research,4maining and practhee, and there is still a good deal of organi-
zational-xork that needs doing, to the point where a further three weeks absence
at that critical time might be very awkward. (In American Universities, the
colleges rather then the departments are the main lines of authority, and a
seperate genetics departmnt actually within the medical school is needed if

subject is to be ade juatel r ted .) However, depending on how
things 20 this summer, it at ght be possible ide us to postpone our return to

Madison until the end of November. This might allow us to spend as much as three
weeks in India. I should be able to give a definite answer on this by about
October 1.

The second problem is, of course financing. We have, of oourse, our tickets
(i.e. Chicago)
for U.S.ASydney round-trip. The best information I can get locally is that it
would cost about $300 each to convert these into round-the-world fares, via
Sydney, Calcutta, and Westward. (I assume that Bombay would be included, or at
ar much higher cost.) Since a Chicago-Calcutta round-trip for one comes to about
1300, there would be a very substuntial saving in, cash» as eit as trayel tines
; zg @ we or you to co
ob FBR r80°SHP2* Seubehaa tae arreneone

If you think the matter is worth pursuing further, I shall be very glad to
hear from you, either here or in Australia, with regard to financial possibilities
at Jeast. We will then be sable to com to an uncomplicated decision whether yam we
mist return directly to the States or can make this journey. If it does work out,

we should probably proceed westward, stopping only at Milan (to see Cavalli) for
a day or two en route home.

There would be no difficulty in converting our tickets at Melbourne or Sydney,
especially a3 ico exchangs in GUS would be required.

I will not renew my correspondence with Khanolkar until I have heard from you-—
in fact, if you would consult him yourself, all the better. I am sure you will have
more pressing matters to attend to during your first weeks at Calcutta?

Tn the lab. we have atill been following the traiis of the sexual and trans-
ductional systams. Jacob made a brilliant contribution with his interrupted mting
experiments, but it is unfortunately not the whole story, as some five percent of
the zygotes don't fit the simple pattern. I'm inclined to think that the male
gametic chromosome breaks 2t 4 particular point (centromere?) which may also tend
to be the first part to enter, or is at least necessary for efficient pairing.
However, it looks as if both fragmsnts can (at least occasionally, if not often)
participats in fertilization, whether their markers are recovered for not depending
on crossing-over between the marker locus and the break point. Most of the diverger
in our views comes from Jacob's stress on the majority cases, and my own on the nob
so rare exceptions.

I have also been diverted by a study cf "L-forms" of EH. coli, partly from a
longstanding sense of frustration in trying to uncessaaund them, They have been
attributed all kinds of life-cyclical meaning, including sexuality, but that is
probably <1]. nonsease. According to our on observations, the 'L-forms' are a
consequence of a defective cell wall, the defect arising sither from external
inhibition (e.g. by penicillin) or a genetic-inetabolic block, e.g. in the biosynthe:
of diaminopimslic acid, a critical wall constituent, or of other comphnents. Withou
its wall, the bacterial pro¥Atoplast still grows, but in en anisotropic mediug like
agar, it forms occasional blebs which expand and pinch off. Without the wali, there
is no regular division mechanism for the cell, 30 the L-form is in effect a ‘colony
of protoplasts. I had had some hopes that these wall-less creatures would be
useful Ln gaietic experiments, e.g. in the uptake of HMK raw DNA, but so far this
hasn't worked. Ye rather badly need sich a system in 5. coli (i.e. an analogue of
the pneumceoccus trandformation).

Quite apart from the personal accolades, that was 4 remarkable articte you
did in the Penguin New Biology. My own writing is as clumsy as can be by comparison

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Medical Genetics