March 1, 195);

Dr. P. R. Edwardes
Box 185
Chamblee

Georgia
Dear Phil:

I was very pleased to hear from you again, thouch it did somewhat
prick my conscience that I have not been able to keep you better informed
as to what was going on here. For the last couple of months, however, I
have been preoccupied more with coli than with Salmonella, Under separate
cover, I have made a point of sending you a copy of a progress report that
may give you some idea of what has been going on, I am sorry to learn that
you have been so overwhelmingly busy. Has there been any possibility of
doing anything with the “Isecki" probiem? Are there any strains that I
ought to have sent to you and may have neglected to?

Unfortunately, I am not planning to go to the Pittsburgh meeting.
Your letter was the first thing to make me feel especially sorry about it,
as I would welcome an opportunity to review all of the stuff that has
accumulated since our visit of one year BZOs

I would, of course, have sent you the reprints that you asked for
long ago except that I only received them a few days ago myself, You can
count on my sending several copies of anything that mar come out in the
future,

.When I have a chance to get back to research in Salmonella I will lect
you know, and I hope you can do the same for my benefit. The work on the
genetics of the specificcoli types has been going rather slowly up to now,
as Dr. Sernstein had been preoccupied with cleaning up the acriflavine story,
There is a brief account of this in my report, To tell the truth, there are
not many more details that might be given, Would the finding be of any
practical use in your routine? I could mention that he found that cells
killed with roceal behaved just like the live material, On the other hand,
formalin will not dos it reacts directly with the dye on the one hand and
on the other it makes the agplutination nonspecific,

We might possibly be even a bit more nostalgic for your southern
Climate except that we have had a remarkably mild winter here, Please give
our best regards to everyone,

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg

Associate Profesesr at Tasatian
Letter to P, R. Edwards -~ Page 2 March 1, 195)

P.S. You will have seen Kauffmann's paper on transduction. I dontt believe
the story on somatic antigens is a true bill, At least there is no critical
evidence that this is not simply a form variation that has nothing to do with
transduction. Our story on the V antigen seems to me even stronger, but as
you know I am mistrustful of this also,

I think you might be amused at some of the experiments I have been
doing lately with single-cell isolation, Those abortive transductions that
are represented by "trails" correspond to motile cells which at each division
give a motile ani a non-motile descendant. I have been following this directly
under the microscope and it goes precisely as anticipated, besides being quite
a bit of fun to separate the two individuals at each fission, So far I have
been able to keep these “half-clones" going for about or up to 0 divisions,

Jel.