The advent of penicillin forever changed the world of medicine at its discovery with its ability to treat diseases, deadly at the time, that are now considered commonplace and easily treatable. Penicillin was one of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century, as antibiotics are one of the most highly prescribed drugs in the world today. Although its discovery is often described as serendipitous, the process by which it was cultivated was quite meticulous, and continued attention has been paid to penicillin’s further development. It is because penicillin and its derivatives have played such a vital role in everyday medicine that it is such an important topic.Penicillin works by virtue of its beta-lactam ring that specifically binds to microbial enzymes in bacterial cell walls, and keeps the cell membrane structures from linking up. Eventually, if the bacterium keeps dividing, the cell membrane will become increasingly weaker and lyse. The beta-lactam ring is very simple in and of itself, but its ability to remain potent with several different functional groups attached to it makes it spectacular in its applications. H R | | R---C---C---H | * | O==C---N---R As was noted earlier, the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming was not as spontaneous as it might originally appear. The antibacterial effects of many molds had been observed numerous times before, and Fleming was doing testing in this area and in the area of lysozymes throughout the 1920s. When he first noticed the antibacterial effects of the penicillium strain of bacteria in 1928, he thought it unremarkable, though further testing revealed that he was onto something special. However, the bacterial strain Fleming was able to culture was unstable and difficult to produce in quantities large enough for testing or practical application. During this time, however, Fleming did ...
