Geoffrey Beale was Ian Gibson's PhD supervisor between 1960 and1963. They published three collaborative papers on Paramecium from 1961 and postulated a new concept, the 'metagon', envisaged as a stable RNA-containing cytoplasmic entity necessary for the maintenance of bacterium-like 'mu' particles (this theory was later invalidated). Gibson later worked with Beale's old mentor, Tracy Sonneborn, at Indiana University before moving to the University of East Anglia where he established a protozoan genetics research group. He was the first to establish homologies between different taxonomic groupings of protozoa.