28/5/63
Dear Dr. Lederberg,
I have read with considerable interest your recent article in Nature in relation to the Future of Man.  This article has stimulated me to write concerning a 'half baked' idea I have had and to ask for your comments.
Briefly it consists of a human-algal symbiosis.  Analogous situations can be found in the animal kingdom, hydra, sponges, protozoa.  The technological problems of such a relationship are enormous but the major initial consideration is whether a large enough algal population could be established to produce any quantitative benefits.
The advantages on paper of such a relationship are attractive, the algae use metabolic CO2 and liberate O2 and carbohydrate providing a system immediately applicable say in long
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term space travel.  The problems on the other hand loom large, immunochemistry, parasitism toxicology.  It could also prove social dynamite in relation to pigmented people with a shielded melanophore layer.
I have been purposely brief in the above outline in order not to bother you with the trivia of what may well be my stupidity.
At present I am studying for a D.Phil degree in the Dept of Biochemistry Oxford.
Yours sincerely
Desmond Clark-Walker