The inclusion in a symposium on viruses of a paper devoted exclusively to the problems of sexu-ality in bacteria may appear to some of you to be inapt. There is, in fact, a two-fold justification for this inclusion. Firstly, the genetic system of Es-cherichia coli is the only tool at present available for the genetic analysis of the relationship of pro-virus to the cell and of its inheritance by progeny; but the anomalies hitherto apparent in the attempt to apply the concepts of classical genetics to this system have limited its usefulness. Secondly, there is now evidence that a transmissible agent, display-ing many unique attributes but which can properly be termed a virus within the existing rather loose connotation of that word, plays a dominant role
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Will Hayes (1953) studied this question.