Correspondence between Pontecorvo and G A Bloxam, of the National Research Development Corporation, concerning the Danish Patent Office objecting to his parasexual cycle patent application

• Reference:GB 248 UGC 198/3/4/2/1/3
• Dates of Creation:March 1959
• Physical Description:
  2 letters (3 pages)

• Scope and Content

  Bloxam thought that the main objection from the Danish Patent Officemain was that the "uniting of the two nuclei in your [Pontecorvo's] process can properly be regarded as a sexual process". In the copy of Pontecorvo's response letter he disputes this by explaining how "it was possible to discover that in A. nidulans, in addition to the sexual cycle and side-by-side with it, there was an essentially different process of genetic recombination which we named "parasexual", and which is now universally known under such name".

  This letter provides a good overview, in Pontecorvo's own words, of his research on Aspergillus and the parasexual cycle.

• Corporate Names

  National Research Development Corporation, 1948-,