M

icrobiology is the study of microorganisms. Microorganisms are all single-celled

microscopic organisms and include the viruses, which are microscopic but not cellular.
Microbial cells differ in a fundamental way from the cells of plants and animals in that
microorganisms are independent entities that carry out their life processes independently
of other cells. By contrast, plant and animal cells are unable to live alone in nature and
instead exist only as parts of multicellular structures, such as the organ systems of
animals or the leaves of plants.

PENICILLIN :

the first antibiotic discovered by accident. Alexander Fleming, a Scottish physician

and bacteriologist, almost tossed out some culture plates that had been
contaminated by mould. Fortunately, he took a second
Look at the curious pattern of growth on the contaminated plates.
Around the mould was a clear area where bacterial growth had
been inhibited (Figure 1.5). Fleming was looking at a mold that could inhibit the
growth of a bacterium.
The mold was later identifiedas Penicillium notatum (pen-i-sill-um n-ttum),
later
renamed Penicillium chrysogenum (kr-sojen-um), and in 1928
Fleming named the molds active inhibitor penicillin. Thus, penicillin
is an antibiotic produced by a fungus. The enormous usefulness
of penicillin was not apparent until the 1940s, when it was
finally tested clinically and mass produced.
Since these early discoveries, thousands of other antibiotics
have been discovered. Unfortunately, antibiotics and other
chemotherapeutic drugs are not without problems. Many antimicrobial
chemicals are too toxic to humans for practical use;
they kill the pathogenic microbes, but they also damage the infected
host. For reasons we will discuss later, toxicity to humans
is a particular problem in the development of drugs for treating
viral diseases. Viral growth depends on life processes of normal
host cells. Thus, there are very few successful antiviral drugs,
because a drug that would interfere with viral reproduction
would also likely affect uninfected cells of the body.
Another major problem associated with antimicrobial drugs
is the emergence and spread of new strains of microorganisms
that are resistant to antibiotics. Over the years, more and more
microbes have developed resistance to antibiotics that at one
time were very effective against them. Drug resistance results
from genetic changes in microbes that enables them to tolerate
a certain amount of an antibiotic that would normally inhibit
them (see the box in Chapter 26, page 757). For example a microbe
might produce chemicals (enzymes) that inactivate antibiotics,
or a microbe might undergo changes to its surface that
prevent an antibiotic from attaching to it or entering it.
The recent appearance of vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus and Enterococcus faecalis (en-te-r-kokkus fe-klis)
has alarmed health care professionals because it indicates that
some previously treatable bacterial infections may soon be impossible
to treat with antibiotics.

In 1929 Alexander Fleming, a British biologist,

inadvertently discovered penicillin. He had observed
bacterial Staphylococci colonies disappearing in cultures
that were contaminated with mold.
Fleming eventually extracted the compound from the mold
that had been responsible for destruction of the bacterial
colonies. The product was named penicillin, after
the Penicillium mold from which it was derived.