DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE ° BETHESDA 14, MD.

 

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH June 20 1960
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Professor Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford University

Palo Alte, California

Dear Josh:

Thanks for calling me last week, and I am sorry to have
pressed you. I'd have been willing to wait on your convenience, but
our director was not. The approximate cost of the call is enclosed.

I know my hypothesis that evolution toward complexity by
selection could occu without polymeric molecules as genes seems irra-
tional. JI have alr ady ,all T want to on the subject, however, and will
work now toward demonstrating it experimentally. I realize that it will
probably be a lifelong program, and that even then I may fail. Such a
failure would not, as I see thingsnow, diminish my conviction that the
reasoning is valid, or that these phenomena probably controlled a very
important phase in the transition from lifeless to living systems.

The finding of one autocatalytic synthesis (not a degradation
or hydrolysis) would not, I understand, put me in business, but it would
answer the protests of some people that such systems do not exist at
all. The next step would be to find some more systems of the same sort,
and finally I would try to show that, when several such systems coexist,
the products are likely to be more comrlex than those of all the
component catalysts acting singly. If complex products accumulate, so
will the number of catalysts, and competition would favor the most
efficient systems and those that could best cooperate with the others.
This, I believe, could gradually convert the mixture to a metabolizing
system, capable of carrying out coordinated syntheses under catalysis.

I wouldn't expect every to obtain more than the earliest indications
of such an evolution.

On citation indexes, I have gradually come into complete agreement
with the views expressed in your letter to me of last October. I favor
avoidance of any selective extraction of citations, but if a pilot study
is required it might usefully start from journals on general science
together with all those in some specialized area, like genetics. The
resulting index would list all articles cited in these journals regardless
of date, source or subject. These citations wouldnt all have to be
published, but cculd be saved for use in a later, complete index. I wrote
to the NSF that, if they approved Garfield's application, I as a member of
the advisory committee would favor revision of the design in this direction,

Sincerely yours,

dem