Another opportunity for penicillin
2005/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
Fleming saw in 1928 that a fungus, Penicilium notatum, produced a substance that killed bacteria. This substance was called penicillin.
However, the fungus P. notatum does not produce much penicillin and scientists have used other species to obtain more penicillin, such as P. chrysogenum. In fact, the strain of this species currently used produces a thousand times more penicillin than P. notatum.
Now, researchers from León (Spain) have seen that the key can be in the mutation of a gene, according to the work published in the journal Science.
The researchers have compared the biochemistry of both species and it seems that the difference is in the way of metabolizing phenyleacetic acid. This molecule is the antecedent of penicillin and depends on a gene that the molecule becomes either penicillin or not. Both P. notatum and P. Chrysogenum already has it, but they are not the same: they are separated in a single pair, which makes P. chrysogenum produce much more penicillin than the rest.
Research is useful in creating strains that provide even more penicillin and, above all, shows that tiny changes in genes can have a great influence.
