December 28, 1955

Dr. Niels K. Jerne
State Serum Institute
Copenhagen, Denmark

Dear Br, Jerne:

I would appreciate the favor of a renrint of your note on antibody
formation which appears in the No.v. 1955 , Proc. Nat. Acad. J.5., and
which has just come to my attention.

Unfortunately, I was not acquainted with your views in time to credit
them at a symposium on gene-enzymes relationships which was hedd at Detroit
early in November. Monod had gone so far as to imply that even in induced
enzyme formation, the iniucing substuste acts as a teaplate for "molding"
the enzyme -- in a rebuttal to this propcesal, I was moved like yourself
to question the same concept even for antibody formation, where théxeis
at least some basis for it. Ian told that this “hatural selection# hypo-
thesis is not very distant from Ehrlich's own views, but have not delved
deeply into his writings. At any rate, I was pleased to see 2t least one
explicit hypothesis of the mschanism by which an antigen could “select”
ane of many synthetic potentialities, and I just wanted te let you know
that you have at least one second for your proposal.

Yours sincarelr.

Lo
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“fj

wf et
pita Lederberg!
ofessor of Gene ti

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