Gunther Stent

How can proteins cause synthesis of more of their own? That would require a reverse flow of information from proteins to DNA.

Thus, several scientists, including Linus Pauling and James Watson, rejected Jern's theory outright, though his more Darwinian-minded colleagues like Gunther Stent and Joshua Lederberg welcomed it more enthusiastically.

Jern's theory did not perish, but was instead modified into a cellular selection theory.

In a 1957 review, David Talmadge credited Churn with originating the modern idea of selection in immunology and added a tentative but crucial detail.