170 
and you can produce DNA with it and you can produce RNA with it as reagents. 
You just can't produce proteins. But this should be the goal, and I think 
we may well find, or my hunch is that naturally occurring E_;_ coli are all 
in this box, and that if you work with the nontranslating systems you don't 
have to worry about it becoming a translating system in nature. 
I think you are going to have to work very, very hard to get a trans- 
lator if one exists in nature, so I am saying I think we can make informed 
judgments, but it is going to take time and hopefully we can get rid of the 
more ridiculous parts of the guidelines. But they will only be ridiculous 
in retrospect. Right now they are very, very necessary. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you. Dr. Rowe is a member of the committee 
which has prepared these guidelines. 
Now I would like to move now to call Dr. Marshall Edgell. Oh, I am 
sorry, Dr. Sinsheiner? 
DR. SINSHEIMER: I don't want to ask a question, but I know there is 
some evidence with regard to translation that I think should be brought 
out right now. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Would you please do so? 
DR. SINSHEIMER: Dr. Berg and Dr. Hogness are the people who have the 
data. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: All right. Dr. Hogness? 
DR. HOGNESS: I mentioned some of it yesterday, on one side of the 
fence, and I think what Dr. Sinsheimer is talking about is on the other 
side. 
Yesterday I mentioned that we have evidence that the frequency curve 
unit length of DNA in Drosophila and yeast of translation is small. It is 
reduced by about two orders of magnitude, 100-fold at least, compared to 
bacteria. 
On the other hand, there is some evidence from Ron Davis's laboratory 
that the transformation, or a function for histidine, for a particular 
enzymatic function in E. coli , can be donated by yeast, again with respect 
to the frequency he doesn't know in that case. 
So what it looks like at the present moment, and I think we need a 
lot more data, is that the probability of translation per unit length of 
DNA that you are inserting from the eukaryote is much smaller, but that 
it may exist is still quite probable, once in a while, at low frequencies. 
Is that a fair summary? 
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