Sir

In his review of James Watson's Genes, Girls and Gamow (see Nature 413, 775–776; 2001; clarification Nature 414, 487; 2001), Horace Judson attributes the discovery of messenger RNA to François Jacob, Sydney Brenner and Matthew Meselson.

In fact, Jacob, Brenner and Francis Crick, at an informal meeting on Good Friday 1960, suddenly 'discovered' the unique RNA found first in 1956 by Elliot Volkin and Lazarus Astrachan. Good accounts of this event can be found in The Statue Within by Jacob and What Mad Pursuit by Crick.

In several publications in 1958, Volkin and Astrachan thoroughly described the unusual properties of this RNA, which they termed DNA-like RNA. These were precisely the properties that Jacob and Jacques Monod sought to assign to the unstable intermediate (which they called X), necessary for the synthesis of galactosidase.

Out of that Good Friday discussion on the lactose operon came the realization that Volkin and Astrachan's DNA-like RNA was indeed the genetic messenger, hence messenger RNA (mRNA).