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Penicillin: An Important Discovery
Penicillin was discovered by Bacteriologist Alexander Fleming in London’s St. Mary’s Hospital, in which he became conscious of his discovery in a communication made public in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology.
What Fleming had found was a simple fungus similar to the mold that commonly appears in bread or cheese, which caused deadly effects on infectious germs. In addition, the first experiences showed that it was harmless to the human organism and that it conserved all its proprieties even when dissolved thousands of times.
Penicillin, as the rest of the beta-lactam antibiotics, exercises a bactericide action by altering the bacterial cell wall, a structure that does not exist in human cells. The bacterial cell wall is found outside of the cytoplasmic membrane and confers bacteria the required resistance to support, without breaking, the elevated osmotic pressure that exists in its interior.
The action of penicillin and of beta-lactam antibiotics in general, develop essentially in the last stage of the peptidoglycan synthesis on the cell wall, in which a series of entwined links among the peptide chains are produced. The formation of these links or bridges is precisely what confers the highest rigidity in the bacterial wall. Therefore, beta-lactam antibiotics and penicillin inhibit the peptidoglycan synthesis, crucial in the formation of the bacterial cell wall. Bacteria without a cell wall explode or are more easily phagocyted by the granulocytes.
Initially, after the commercialization of natural penicillin in the decade of 1940, most of the bacteria were sensitive to penicillin, even the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, due the use and abuse of this substance, many bacteria have become resistant, although it is still active in some kinds of Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Neisseria, Clostridium, Listeria, Haemophilus, Bacteroides, Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Klebsiella and Enterobacter.
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