Dept. Genetics
U. of Wisconsin
Madison 6, Wise ~

CoDeCe ’ Chamblee, Ga.

February 11, 1953

Dear Dr. Hayes:

Your letter of the 25th reaches me at a time when I am ,in fact,
precoccupied with another matter, so that I will not be able to
study it until I return to Madison shortly.

May I comment briefly on the plans for the CSH symposum? It would
not be either profitable or feasible for us to prepare a critique
of your “empirical and provocative" paper, so you assume a free hand
and need not worry (as you would not in any case) about an unkind
discussion. On the other hand, the points that you ask permission
to quote will be reviewed to the extent that they will be ready for
@ publication in our own brief paper, which will have to do with the
untangling of transduction and lysogenization, especially in E. coli.
It would be better on the whole, 2 think, if your references to our
work were confined to the published data, as these are all that I am
sufficiently certain of now.

Re your last questions, thw my views have been pretty well stated
in that recent paper in Genetics. Until we kmow a good deal more about
both F+ and the mechanica of recombination in K-12, the statement of
Fe being possibly a genetic vector may have unsuspected meaninga. As
far as I can see now, we have evidence only of whole cells. As to the
transmission of defective genotypes, the most pertinent evidence comes
from diploids, and the only defects we have everf# seen have involved
the Mal-S segment. We did not for example find Mtl yv Lac-, except for
types that proved to be homozygous diploid Lac-/Lac-.n the other hand,
we have occasionally gotten complete diploids (even with respect to Mal-S).
I will not say that defective gametes can never occur, but complete ones
certainly do. All this is old hat now, and most of it in the 1951 OSH.
As I have said before, however, I will be surprised &f the final answer
does not prove us somehow both right 4n some way that is not yet obvious.

I do not have the references here, but understand you have been
interested in the XII somatic antigen of Salmonella. If you still have

them, would you be kind enough to send me reprints? Thie antigen, or
seme fraction, seems to be the receptor for our traneducing,,phage PLT22.
7

Yours sincere ly; at

a
we

Joshua Lederberg

Ne