DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE . BETHESDA 14, MD.

 

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

April 1h, 1960

Professor Joshua Lederberg
Genetics Department
Stanford University

Palo Alto, California

Dear Josh:

I foolishly postponed the reading of your Nobel address
until today, and I am embarrassed that I did not know your current
ideas on the origin of life when I wrote last. However, I had heard
about them vaguely from Newton Morton, and I felt that because of
your active interest and definite ideas on the subject, you would be
a particularly good persm to expose my own ideas to.

The idea of a simple DNA-like polymeric system is appealing
and I think a very likely intermediate step in the early evolution of
life, but I believe the polymeric nature of the genetic material is a
refinement that the earliest reproducing systems may have been able to
do without. I think a caréful analysis of the question reveals that
mutable reproduction does not have to be built into the gene-analog.

New "genes" might be contributed as exceptional by-products of the

old ones or by entirely independent chemical reactions, Natural selection
can operate on a "frozen" gene pool, i.e., on the backlog of genetic
variability, and continued evolution by natural selection isind&fferent

to the source of new genetic material, as long as there is such a source,

I am enclosing a reprint of my 1957 paper in the hope that a
rereading of it may help persuade you to see the problem as I see it.

Sincerely yours,

Chor

Gordon Allen