ANSTITUTO DE QUIMICA

FiSIOLOGICA Y PATOLOGICA
ESCUELA DE MEDICINA
UNIVERSIOAD DE CHILE November 8, 1956

Borgofio 1470 - Santiago

Dear Josh;

I received your letter of October 26 with a check
enclosed. Thank you for both, I have taken care of the deposit
of the check directly.

I am enclosing here a check for $17 corresponding
to $ 5.- for shipping and postage charges on account of QUHL
and $12.- for 20 % commissions on the sale of ONPG to B. Davis
and Dexter. I have received a check for % 20.- to the order of
QChL from State of New York, Division of the Treasury in Albany,
N. Y. Do you know anything "about this? It is not any sale I know
of.

I have readved a letter from Mann saying that he confirmed
you by phone about your 20 % arrangement. He is intrigued by the
fact that you use QChL stationary. Yor your information the QChL
society does not exist anymore. In view that I did not need the
name because of my association with Mann and because one of the
partners here in Chile (owner of the name QChL) was acting only
as an intermediary, we decided, in complete agreement, to dissolve.
the society. Therefore I have only one partner here qn Chile, he
is the one who synthesises the cpds. and I handle the administrative
portion. You can use the stationary of QMChL to write to me or
for scratch paper if you want to.

With regard to the quotation on 10 gms. of methyl or
butyl- -B,D-galactoside I would estimate it in 30 to 40 per gram
whether the yield is as good as the ONPG or not. The preparation
of either one is as hard, or harder than the one for CNPG. |

These settles the business part, I believe.

In your letter you mention a Nenclosed note" for J. Bact.
r did not find any, so I guess that-you forgot to put it in the “
envelope. It was very interesting to know about the evidence for
the lack of cell wall in protoplast and penicillin action. Every-
thing ties quite well.

The DNA penetration problem is on its way and has shown
some difficulties to start with. The main one is té eliminate any
nucleotide or TCA-soluble material with P32 because the cells pick
them up even in the absence of growth. The other problem is to
avoid hydrolysis of the DNA outside the cell. I would like to
try for transformation routinely, beeewme Qt doesn't take much work
and I thought that it would be easy to follow Streptomycin resistance
as a marker because it would eliminate the need for control plates
of the mexkxugk recipient in view of the small incidence of mutants.
What do you think of it? Could you send me@Streptomycin resistant
strain?, I don't have any here with the proper markers. I would
like to have, if possible, one with the constthtutive-lactase gene.

I tried to get one by selection but I did ghot have any luck and I
decided it would be easier(for me) to get, * by crossing.
It

Do you want still a copy of the ms on the sonicated cells? I
have found it. The paper will appear in the Nov. issue.

With regard to a reprint of my paper on the Chemostat you
can ask the “ecretary of the Enzyme Institute. I will send
you a list of the reprints of your paperS¥T have. ismxoxderxtm
You told me that you could send me missing ones which are available.
I. will thank you very much for this favor.

These clears the fientific part.

The private part is rather sad. Raquel hasn't felt much
better in spite of being in bed for about five months and the
doctor has advised an operation. We plan to have the operation
done in New York by a famous authoriy in the field, Dr. Leo Mayer.
It 1s probable that we will leave around the middle of December.
The operation and the post-operatory treatment will take about
six months.

I would like to ask you to try to get me a job inv. Y.
for that period of time. I know that it will not be easy, but
I will need the job badly because, in spite of Dr. Mayer's kind
offer of not charging for his professional services we will have
at least two months of hospital at $ 25 a day plus the trip and
so on.

Luckily Raquel's spitit has been high and the operation
has very good chances of eliminating all her troubles.

Thanking you in advance for the multiple favors I have
asked you in this letter, recéivecyou and Esther my best regards,

ours,
P. S. I forgot to mention Monod's ms. I will quote Monod himself
and I will say that the most interesting part of his work is what
he doesn't say. It-is imposible to decide from his paper the .
point whether the permease is responsible or not for the-8-galact-
osidase activity of the intact cell. He didn't do the crucial
experiments, such as testing if the lactase activity was inhibited
with the same inhibitors as the permease or if the rate of hydro-
lysis was the same as the rate of entrance. He says that he has
measured the rate of entrance of ONPG by inhibition of the TMG
entrance, but he does give the data. As a matter of fact the
reference to the table was crossed out with ink in the ms. My
conclusion is that either K-12 has a different system or Monod's
permease doesn't have any relation with penetration of ONPG for
hydrolysis. You must think about my ms on activation, I do too.
But,believe me, I really can not sit down and finish it, I hope

to do it soon. —_—