Title:

Terminology in Bacterial Genetics

Creator:

Watson, James D., 1928-
Ephrussi, Boris, 1901-1979
Leopold, Urs
Weigle, Jean

Date:

18 April 1953

Location:

Box: 10. Folder: 42

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of Anne Ephrussi.

Genre:

Articles

Format:

Text

Extent:

1 pages

Language:

English

Legacy Source Citation:

Free Text. Nature 4355: 701

Legacy ID:

BBAJMI

NLM ID:

101584906X6354

Profiles Collection:

The Joshua Lederberg Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584906X6354

Annotation:

Author: Joshua Lederberg. Date Written: April 30, 2004. KW: Ephrussi, Leupold, Watson, Weigle in letter to Nature, 4/18/53 suggest "interbacterial information" ... does not imply necessarily the transfer of material substances, and recognizes the possible future importance of cybernetics at the bacterial level". ------ She was oblivious that this was a spoof. 4/30/04 From: Lily Kay: Who wrote the book of life. P. 58 ... For Watson, 1953 marked a shift in representation. Prior to 1953, his papers had referred to replication and mutation in terms of genetic transfer, genetic specificity, and genetic continuity. But in anticipation of the potential contributions of cybernetics and information theory to biology, Watson and Crick consciously began to represent their findings through an information discourse. In a letter to Nature (just before their announcement of the double helix), Watson together with geneticist Boris Ephrussi and physicists Urs Leopold and J.J. Weigle, suggested new terminology in bacterial genetics. Seeking to impose rhetorical order on the proliferating semantic confusion in the field (transformation, recombination, induction, transduction, etc.), they proposed to replace these uses with the term inter-bacterial information. "It does not imply," they argued, "necessarily the transfer of material substances, and recognizes the possible future importance of cybernetics at the bacterial level." jl 8/29/99

Lederberg Grouping:

CC. Correspondence C.