Alexander Fleming penicillin mould sequenced

[Still Waters]

Researchers have sequenced the genome of Alexander Fleming's penicillin mould for the first time and compared it to later versions.

Alexander Fleming famously discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928 while working at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, which is now part of Imperial College London. The antibiotic was produced by a mould in the genus Penicillium that accidentally started growing in a Petri dish.

Now, researchers from Imperial College London, CABI and the University of Oxford have sequenced the genome of Fleming's original Penicillium strain using samples that were frozen alive more than fifty years ago.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-genome-alexander-fleming-penicillin-producing-mould.html