Monday, May 11, 2009

Does penicillium sp. that grows on palm seeds can be used to make penicillin?

i am willing to do a research on palm oil. this penicillium sp. is the fungus that infects the seeds. i just wonder does it could be any initiative to do with this fungus.

Does penicillium sp. that grows on palm seeds can be used to make penicillin?
Fleming recounted later that the date of his breakthrough was on the morning of Tuesday, September 28, 1928. At his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a halo of inhibition of bacterial growth around a contaminant blue-green mold Staphylococcus plate culture. Fleming concluded that the mold was releasing a substance that was inhibiting bacterial growth and lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture of the mold and discovered that it was a Penicillium mold, now known to be Penicillium notatum. Charles Thom, an American specialist working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was the acknowledged expert, and Fleming referred the matter to him. Fleming coined the term "penicillin" to describe the filtrate of a broth culture of the Penicillium mold. Even in these early stages, penicillin was found to be most effective against Gram-positive bacteria, and ineffective against Gram-negative organisms and fungi. He expressed initial optimism that penicillin would be a useful disinfectant, being highly potent with minimal toxicity compared to antiseptics of the day, but, in particular, noted its laboratory value in the isolation of "Bacillus influenzae" (now Haemophilus influenzae). After further experiments, Fleming was convinced that penicillin could not last long enough in the human body to kill pathogenic bacteria, and stopped studying penicillin after 1931, but restarted some clinical trials in 1934 and continued to try to get someone to purify it until 1940.


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