UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
August 28, 1956

CRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY
LAJOLLA, CALIFORNIA

Professor J. Lederberg
Department of Genetics

The University of Wisconsin
Madison 6, Wisconsin

Dear Joshua,

Forgive me for my great delay in replying to your letter of June 2)
which arrived in La Jolla while I was absent for several weeks. Since my
return I have waited a few more weeks to reply as I wanted to get whatever
information might be available on the question that you have raised.

Unfortunately, among the marine invertebrates that are easily main-
tained under laboratory conditions there does not seem to be any that meet
the requirements that you specify. Leaving the invertebrates aside, one
might consider fishes. My thought, of course, was that of trout, which are
commonly bred for commercial purposes. These you will easily find in Wisconsin
also, and spawning, at the time when you need sperms and eggs, might be in-
duced by proper hormonal treatment. I am afraid, however, that in view of
the very large number of chromosomes of trout the effect of the X or Y chromo-
some might be too small to be detected. Another possibility among fishes is
Fundulus which, according to Makino's book on chromosome numbers, has thirty-
six chromosomes deploid. Fundulus can be kept very easily in the laboratory
and can also be brought to spawning artificially. It occurs in the east as
well as on the west coast, and I think it should not be difficult to get as
much material as you wish. This information comes from Dr. Carl L. Hubbs,
who knows his business of ichthyology very well.

I have talked about your problem with Daniel Mazia, who is here for
a few weeks, and he believes that it might be better perhaps to attempt to
separate sperms having different renetic constitutions on the basis of some
chemical property manifest in the cytoplasm of the cell. He was mentioning
to me also that H.M. Kalckar is attempting something of the sort in human
sperms to see whether there is any cytochemical difference between sperms
esrrying the factor for galactosemia and the normal ones. Mazia told me also
that he will probably drop you a line on a similar matter very soon,

I am sorry that I cannot be of much help to you and if something else
comes to my mind I shall certainly resume: this conversation.

Next month I will be going to Italy for a while and I shall try, with
the help of Cavalli, to get an invitation for Esther and you to visit some
Italian laboratory.

With best wishes to both of you,

Yours sincerely,
TA ricut

/

A.A. Buzzati-Traverso

AAB-T/rh