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MINISTERE DE L’EDUCATION NATIONALE

 

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA
RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE June 8, 1957

LABORATOIRE DE GENETIQUE
PHYSIOLOGIQUE

GIF-SUR-YVETTE (SEINE-ET-OISE)

 

 

 

Té.. : 136 aA GIF

Prof. J. Lederberg

Department of Medical Genetics
Genetics Building

Madison 6, Wisconsin

U.S.A.

Dear Josh,

I received yesterday your letter of June 3 and want, first
of all, to congratulate you with the new appointment and,second, to
wish you the most brilliant succes in the new undertaking. I am happy
to know that your universally recogniged merits have been consecrated
by entrusting you with a position of authority which is often thought
of, in the academic world, as one which takes a man nearest to the
exercise of free will. I leave it to your own experience to find out

whether this is an illusion !

I cannot answer as yet the question whether B-26 still
retains the cytoplasmic units. In the past the strain B-26 kept them
over a period of several years, but the fact that the proportion of
cells carrying it constantly declined prevented the important study
of the properties of "segregational petites" and of the role of the
recessive carried by B-26. We now have this gene in a well marked chro-
mosome, This gives us the possibility of applying the prototroph tech-
nique for the study of the proportion of cellgs carring the cytoplasmic
particles and of the conditions which favor their maintenance or loss.
This is a study which I am definitely planning, espacially because
Hydras are proving to be desappointing in several ways. My feeling to-
day is that I may soon return to yeast and the petite problem, which
still seems to me to contain a feypotentially important secrets.

Concerning Wright, I hardly know what to say. There are no
french sources which can supply the requit¥ed funds, What about the
Damon Runyon Fund ? They were interested in our yeast work and I had
a grant from them a few years ago, The grant, was not renewed for a
second year, but this was due, I feel, to shee "political" incident.

coslece
- 2

I am, of course, very much interested in Wright's final write-
up. Could you ask him to send me a carbon copy when his thesis is
written.

I know nothing about what you call the "Royaumont-Stockholm
cycle", but I had on another ground some hope of seeing you here in
the spring 1958. As you know, Pontecorvo, Catcheside, Westergaard and
I have some funds from the Rockefeller Foundation for the organization
of a few genetics Conferences: the one in Glasgow was organized with
these means. I have now been asked by the above friends to organize the
next symposium, It's subject will be "Extrachromosomal heredity" and I
have scheduled it tentatively for March 31 - April 3, 1958. Our funds
are very modest and we can afford only the transportation of Europeans
or of Americans who happen to be in Europe. However, the participation
of some 5 or 6 Americans in the planned Conference appears to me so
important that I have asked the US Navy for help in the form of trans-
portation on their planes. The decision is now up to Washington. The
list I submitted to them has your name on it. I hope my request will
be answered favorably, but I learned a few days ago from Pontecorvo
that you are organizing a meeting at a date close to the one I have
selected and I wonder whether you would be able to attend in case the
Navy offers the transportation (Incidentally I will appreciate keeping
all this confidential).

Sincerely yours, D/) Carr

Boris EPHRUSSI