M.R,C. Unit 5 March 1958 Dear Jim, postcards. Thank youfor your two letters to say nothin? ;~,~~ Let me answer the second letter first, certainly like to oome for the spring term next year as a visiting Professor in the Chemistry Department. f have discussed it with Paul, Odile and Max, and though Max has minor reservations, and though naturally the M.R.C. will have to be oonsultedo they are all in favour, Next year is especially suitable because we are not likely to have so many visPtors then. F?aturally I shall be prepared to give some lectures, but we can discuss all that later. It is really very kind of you to have cooked this up for me, We were very pleased to have the acaount of<'the micro- somal particles, which gave us a much better pieture'of what. you are up to than the various rumours which had reached USe I' passed it on to Xeaen, who is actively engaged on the sample you sent him,, He tells me that he will be writing to you about his preliminary findings in a day or so, I\., As you will have heard Sydney has relatively:pure `2 sheaths, and George and Sewell think they have relatively pure;.' tail fibres, but the definitive experiment - to show that the h \ locus alters the fingerprint - has yet to be done. Sydney and \ Bob Horne have shown that the cores have a fine hole, say 20 A diameter, down their middle, BBahlon and I, with help from John _ Smith, are now actively working on the chemistry of the soluble RNA, but so far our only results are very preliminary. Seymour is tackling one of the abnormal haemoglobins as an exercise, I. Incidentally last week I sent off to Alex a set of good coordinates for poly A, which we should now try to write up* We are likely to have some trouble from Bear and Morgan, but I will write separately about that. Sydney and I visited Maurice last week, He seems muoh more cheerful, and appears to be making a much bet$er job of clearing up DNA. There was an evening symposium here ,on dsele, with Weber and both Huxleys, in whioh the Huxley model went over in a big way. . You will be amused to hear that in February,I gave three publier lectures at LC. London on @The IQuoleic Aloidsw'whioh. were crowded out. Also that in the evenings we (mainly:Sydney)' have * 2.w h gfven a short sharp course on simple modern genetics to.Fred Sanger, Ieben, Maurice Reeoe, Brian Hartley and some of their students6 We also had a one-day meet%ng with Ponte, Prftohard and Bob Edgar on.small-distanoe recombination. After tea today Paul will give us a talk on Rualeio acid. Xmidentally Fred, in collaboration with Bruoe Stocker is starting to work on the flagella protein from Salmonella, in the first instance to develop hi&new ideas about amino aoid sequence detemninafion, but we hopeto slip in a little .genetics later, though fine mapping looks diffioult. '. Sydney has had some newish ideas about &ding, whiuh we will tel.1 you about when they are a little tidier, 1 have to give a talk on this subfeot at the end of May in French..in Paris, so help me. .', We are,`at'long last, moving into ournew lab, in the hut, which gives us a little more spaoe, but Mahlon and X wiil probably have to leave the Molten0 at Easter, Qabrielle and 3 have had German Measles, Jacqueline has mumps, Odile is covered w2th spots of unknown origin but_ otherwise we are alZ'wel1. We hear news of some of your ',, problems,from Belga, '. /, F,.H.C. Crick I ,. ,Dr J.D.,Watson, The Biological Labs., Ha'rvard University,' Cambridge 38,. " Mass., U.S.A.