Re: What is the the mold penicillium on juices?

Hi Mathew,

Here are some answers to your questions.

• Penicillium doesn't have a chemical structure. I think that you are confusing Penicillium, the mold, with penicillin, the antibiotic extracted from the mold. Penicillium refers to a group of fungi (a genus). One species of this genus, Penicillium chrysogenum, produces what we call penicillin.
  In fact there are several "penicillins", both natural and synthetic, with a variety of structures as you will see at the Wikipedia penicillin page.
• It's difficult to say who first identified Penicillium. People have known for thousands of years that some types of mold can be used to treat infections, even if they didn't know the name of the mold or how it worked. It may have been the famous scientist Joseph Lister who first identified the mold as Penicillium, in around 1871. Another famous scientist, Louis Pasteur, may have been the first to identify the species of Penicillium that secretes penicillin, in about 1874. History records that Alexander Fleming was the first person to extract penicillin from Penicillium chrysogenum and identify it as the antibiotic agent, in 1928-29.
  There's much more information on penicillin history at the Discovery of Penicillin page.
• Penicillium has affected the world in a huge way. Imagine if you lived only 100 years ago, before antibiotics. You could have become seriously ill or even died due to a simple infection - maybe a sore throat or a dirty cut on your finger. Many people who would otherwise have died have been saved by the discovery of penicillin and many other antibiotics. It's not all good news though - we have used antibiotics on such a huge scale that some strains of bacteria are becoming resistant to them. There are even some "superbugs" that are resistant to virtually every antibiotic that we have.
• Penicillin was not discovered during war, but it was used extensively to treat people for the first time during World War II. If you go to the links in this answer you will read about two scientists called Howard Florey and Ernst Chain and their role in the large scale production of penicillin.