• Question: If penicillin wasn't discovered, is there an antibiotic we can use to the same effect?

    Asked by Isaac to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Many fungi and bacteria produce antibiotics. It just so happened that Alexander Fleming observed the killing effect caused by a mould from Penicillium genus. This was caused by the compound we now call Penicillin. This was therefore the first antibiotic which became commercially available.

      Another example of an antibiotic produced by a microorganism is Erythromycin. This actually kills more bugs than penicillin and is slightly less prone to developing resistance. It also is better at killing strange bugs. It is much more structurally complex than Penicillin (which is probably why it took a lot longer to be isolated and used as a drug). It is still produced by growing a lot of the actinomycete called Saccharopolyspora erythraea and then purifying the drug from the medium in which the bug is growing.

      We are likely to discover more antibiotics as we discover more microorganisms. It is quite a common thing for them to produce.

    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Yes – there are lots of different sorts of antibiotics. I had to write them all out for work recently and it was more than a page in small type.

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