Penicillium

Penicillium was discovered in 1809 by Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link. Today, it has been developed into penicillin. Penicillin, an antibiotic, can prevent bacterial infections. It is also present in foods. It is invaluable in today’s economy and practical use. Because of it, millions of lives have been saved. Along with the invention of anesthesia, antibiotic invention has been credited to being one of medicine’s greatest gifts to the world.

In 1927, Alexander Fleming had been studying the properties of staphylococci, a genus of gram-positive bacteria. After leaving a sample of staphylococcus alone for a few months, he noticed that the culture had been covered in a fungus. However, the nearby staphylococcus had been completely removed, whereas the cultures farther away had been less affected. Taking the fungi and growing it in a pure culture, and it produced a substance to destroy disease-causing bacteria.

Further testing proved that it cured illnesses such as pneumonia, scarlet fever, and others that were gram-positive. However, gram-negative bacteria that were tested that caused illnesses like typhoid fever, were not affected by the antibiotic. He continued research, but was somewhat unsuccessful in reproducing the mold quantity quickly.

In 1939, Dr. Howard Florey, a Nobel Laureate, and three colleagues at Oxford University began extensive research and were able to prove penicillin's ability to kill infectious bacteria. The current war with Germany reduced resources, and the British scientists turned to the United States for help, because they did not have enough results to produce a good quality of penicillin. In the United States, scientists were already working on fermentation methods to increase the growth rate of fung...

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...l cultures. July 9, 1941, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley, Oxford University Scientists came to the U.S. with a small package containing a small amount of penicillin to begin work.

There was a narrow range of treatable diseases, and as a result, instead of trial and error usage with antibiotics, wide-spectrum antibiotics were created. Wide-spectrum antibiotics are a cocktail of antibiotics that can simultaneously treat a large range of illnesses -- gram positive bacterias.

The first breakthrough was ampicillin, which demonstrated a broader spectrum of activity than any other penicillins. Continued development showed upon new penicillins: flucloxacillin, methicillin, and dicloxacillin. Although they treated most basic gram-positive bacterias, they could not treat MRSA, (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) that were a result of methicillin.