June 21, 1968

Professor M. C. Nesheim
Department of Poultry Science
Cornell University

Ithaca, New York 14850

Dear Professor Nesheim:

I am writing to you to ask for more information about the selection of
chicks capable of more or less efficient utilization of argenine. I have
seen your paper in the Canadian Journal of Genetics for June 1966, and
your abstract in Federation Proceedings in 1967. I would be grateful to
you for reprints of your work on this subject, and particularly for refer-
ences to any more recent findings, either from your own laboratory or
elsewhere. I have been keeping my eyes open during the last twenty years
for more explicit evidence of genetic variation in nutritional competence
in higher organisms, and with the exception of your work with the chicks,
have found almost nothing on it.

I have a more explicit, if highly speculative, question to ask you about
your chick strains. Have you thought of looking at them for some indigenous
viruses, say like the fowl pox that plays an interesting role in enhancing
parthenogenesis in turkeys? (Olsen & Buss, Genetics 8/67).

There are some related questions that I could ask you, but they will be
obvious if I indicate that I have in mind the sert of question that Stanfield
Rogers raised in his article in Nature for December 10, 1966. If indigenous
viruses are not in question, I could still ask you about the impact of
vaccination, for example for fowlpox, on the nutritional behavior of your
selected lines.

Sincerely yours,

hua Lederberg J
rofessor of Genetics

eect