PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORY SERVICE
(Directed by the Medical Research Council for the Ministry of Health)

~Centrat—Pupiic-Haatta-Laporatony, Bureau,
COLINDALE AVENUE,
Lonpbon, N.W.9.

7th October, 1953.

Telephone: COLINDALE 7041 (8 lines)
Telegrams: DEFENDER, NORPHONE, LONDON.

 

Dear br. Lederberg,

Thank you for your letter of the llth September which I found on my
return from the Rome Congress.

I was very glad to learn that the paratyphoid-B typing phage B.4.0.R.
and the typhoid phage little k proved to be useful in transduction experiments.
From the rather scanty information passed on by Dr. Anderson it appears that
you have transduced the typhoid H antigen d to a Salm.paratyphi B strain, by
means of a lysate of Salm.typhi prepared with phage k.

I do not quite understand the meaning of what you wrote about the
negative results with phages O-1,-2,-3. On the one hand, you wrote that the
stock preparation of phage k readily transduces motility to 0 901; on the other
hand, you stated that the phages 0-1,-2,-3 "give negative results in
transduction assays, even with 0 901 lysogenic for k as indicator®, From the
first statement I would assume that when O 901 becomes lysogenic for k it also
becomes motile, but apparently this assumption is not correct.

Dr. Anderson hes now sent you the full set of the available latent
phages of Salm.typhi, and I hope that more of these will prove useful in your
experiments, _ In this connection I would like to draw your attention to the
fact that these type-determining phages have been first described in Nature,
267, 603, 1951, not in the paper you have quoted on page 420 of your paper in

Lopical Revie » 32, 403, 1952 (your reference No.3). In the set of ten
paratyphoid-B typing pheges, which you received from Chamblee, the following
are known to be type-determining phages: 3b, Beccles, Taunton, B.A.0.K. and
Dundee (see Table Lu in Lancet, 2, 10, 1951; and Nicolle et al., Ann.Inst.Fast.,
80, 496 and 479, 1951).

You will remember the earlier correspondence about Professor Crezé of
Angers, and you will be interested to hear that what he chaimed was well
founded, I examined a number of the cultures he used in his experiments and
there can be little doubt that he succeeded in inducing Vieantigen formation in
authentic cultures of H 901 and 0 901 which I sent him, In fact, these
cultures were from the same batch as those I sent you on the loth February, 1953.
The two interesting points in Crézé's results are:

(a) In each instance the change was produced via the typically ‘rough!

variant, (Please look up the penultimate paragraph in my letter to
you dated lst January, 1953).
(b) The conditions of the experiments appear to preclude participation
of active becteriophage.
I understand Professor Crézé now has a preliminary note in the press.

//
Dr. &nderson did not tell me that you would like to have some
of my old reprints. A few days ago I sent you two envelopes containing
a collection of old reprints. Some of the ancient pepers are now out
of print. If some of the reprints sent are of no interest to you they
“ay perhaps be of some use to one of your co-workers,

With kind regards,

/

Yours sincerely,
Professor J. Lederberg,

Department of Genetics, Ce .
University of Wisconsia,

College of Agriculture,

Agricultural Hall,

Madison, 6,

‘Wisconsin,