• Question: What are the first antibiotics produced with penicillin ?

    Asked by julien.l to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      I’m not sure I understand the question – penicillin is an antibiotic.

      This is a timeline of when different antibiotics were discovered. Notice that there have been few discoveries for several decades: http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v12/n5/fig_tab/nrd3975_T1.html

    • Photo: Marikka Beecroft

      Marikka Beecroft answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered from the beta-lactam family. A group of antibiotics found from fungus, later on synthetic pencillins were made use the original penicillin as a template and adding more chemical groups onto it. The first couple made were Ampicillin, Carbenicillin and Oxacillin. Hope this helped!!!

    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      A fungus from the genus called Penicillium was observed to produce an antibiotic called penicillin (the ‘u’ is important, its not a typo). These fungi only produced penicillin. They produced no other antibiotics.

      The chemical structure of penicillin eventually became the template for all beta-lactam based antibiotics (there are hundreds of these). Penicillin is no longer used very often and the new beta-lactam based drugs were most often chemically synthesised instead of being produced by a fungus.

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