Some Recollections and Reflections on Mutation Rates

Abstract

IN thinking about Jan Drake's creative and persistent interest in mutation, I am prompted to reflect on the extent to which investigations, intricately interweaving the study of mutation and the use of mutants, have figured so prominently in the progress of our understanding of biological processes. I take this opportunity to record some of my own recollections of the work on mutation in the 1940s and early 1950s that was so influential in the development of quantitative biology. In 1943, Luria and Delbrück had elegantly shown that mutation could occur prior to the selection process used to detect its products. In 1944, Avery et al. had shown that the chemical material responsible for the transfer of genetic properties from one bacterium to another (bacterial transformation) was DNA, but the general implications of this demonstration were still regarded with suspicion. The proposal by Watson and Crick (1953) for the molecular structure of DNA was still in the future. In retrospect, our naiveté in those early days may seem amusing but some of the paradoxes that were encountered remain with us to this very day.

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