UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA

PHILADELPHIA 4

The School of Medicine

DEPARTMENT OF MICROBIOLOGY
November 18, 1955,

Dr, Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
University of Wisconsin
Madison 6, Wisconsin

Dear Dr, Lederberg:

Orville Wyss, as Chairman of the Program Committee of
the Society of American Bacteriologists, has asked me to organize a sym-
posium on Cellular Organization in Relation to Function, for the afternoon
of May 3, 1956, in Houston, Texas, Our purpose is to help open up the
relatively new field which relates subcellular structure with biochemical
function, Participants are promised publication of 250 word abstract,in
Bacteriological *roceedings, as they would have for ordinary contributed
papers, and Dr, Perry Wilson, I understand, will include in Hacteriological
Proceedings a two-page report on the symposiun,

 

It seems to me that the cultivation of this relatively
new field will be better served by a considerable number of relatively
brief illustrative reports with discussion rather than by extended reviews,
Therefore I am thinking in terms of perhaps eight papers of 15 minutes each,
with five to ten minutes for discussion of each,

Your account of the actual physical transfer of genetic
material in conjugating bacterial cells was most exciting to me on the
occasion of your visit to Philadelphia, is it reasonable to hope that by
next May you may have enough details and illustrations to be willing to
present them in our symposium, along with such genetic data as there is
time for in such a brief presentation? If, as I certainly hope, this is
true, may I ask for a title, since unfortunately the program has to be set
up far ahead of time, “

Sincerely yours,

SM:jih Stuart Mudd