We are finishing up with a useful mold, a blue mold, and one that I am sure that most everyone has heard of. I am referring to Penicillium notatum. This is a common blue mold that grows on fruit. Thanks to the efforts of Alexander Fleming, American scientist Ernst Boris Chain and Australian Howard Walter Florey, this blue mold can be produced into an antibiotic called penicillin which helps kill bacteria that cause harmful diseases. It is also used to flavor some cheeses (eww) but I can't think about that. Cheese is the only dairy product that we are still eating at the moment. I am on a mission to find a nondairy cheese that tastes amazing.
So this amazing discovery was made accidentally by a Scottish bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Fleming. Fleming was born in August 1881 in Scotland and moved to London when he was 13. He trained to be a doctor and did research at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School. Fleming served in the Army Medical Corps during WWI. In 1928, Fleming stopped his work in the lab to have Christmas vacation and when he came back, he noticed that mold had developed on a set of culture dishes that had not been properly cleaned. Fleming noticed that the mold created a bacteria-free area around itself. He continued to experiment with this accidental discovery and later named it penicillin. By the 1940, penicillin was being mass produced in America. There are four types of penicillins. Penicillin G is usually an injection. This is used to treat meningitis, syphilis, pneumonia, and septicaemia. Penicillin V is used to treat rheumatic fever, Lyme disease, anthrax, skin infections, and tonsillitis. Procaine penicillin and benzathine penicillin are two other types of penicillin.
Alexander Fleming died in March 1955 but until that time, he dedicated himself to studying immunology, chemotherapy, and bacteriology.
It is a good think he was so dedicated.
You can grow your own blue mold very easily with just a few things you probably already have. You need one piece of cut fruit, apple, lemon wedge, orange wedge, etc. You will need to take a cotton swab and rub it over something dusty. Then rub the outside of the orange, lemon, or whatever fruit you are using, for example the rind part. Put the fruit in a zip lock bag with a couple of drops of water and seal it very tightly. Place this baggie in a small cardboard box and keep in a dark place. Check often but never open the bag. I will post pics of ours when it grows.
You can watch a short film at Bio about Alexander Fleming and learn more.
Medical News Today penicillin
More on penicillin and Alexander Fleming
PBS
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