Penicillin Discovery

A life-saving medicine wouldn’t be expected to have been found in a moldy tray, but this is exactly what happened. Millions of lives were saved by this discovery. But how did penicillin, an infection-killing medicine, go from mold to gold? All of penicillin’s main growth occurred while bacteriologist Alexander Fleming was out on vacation. Fleming’s work lab was left a mess. “When he came back, he noticed that every dish he had left out in the open was covered in mold,” says Jesse Lane in lines 19-20 of “Not-So-Dumb Luck”. Fleming also saw that while the majority of dishes were covered in plain mold, one dish ¬, containing a staphylococci culture, had grown a tuft of yellow-green mold (Lane 121). Around this mold was a ring, and after

After growing the Penicillium in a pure culture, he found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. Fleming published his findings in1929, adding that his discovery might have therapeutic value if it could be produced in a large quantity. Mary Bellis, author of “The History of Penicillin”, states that “It was not until 1939 that Dr. Howard Florey…and three colleagues… began intensive research and were able to demonstrate penicillin’s ability to kill infectious bacteria” (123). Since World War II was waging, the scientists could not produce the amounts of penicillin needed for clinical experiments on humans. The scientists turned to America for help and were quickly referred to the Peoria Lab. Scientists there were already studying fermentation methods to increase the growth rate of fungal cultures. “One [sic] July 9, 1941,” says Bellis, “Howard Florey and Norman Heatley… came to the US with a… package containing a small amount of penicillin to begin work.” The scientists found that pumping air into deep vats of corn steep liquor and other key ingredients produced a substance that could quickly grow large amounts of penicillin. Finally the scientists could grow enough penicillin to experiment on