Mold Awards
- London, end of July 1928. Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist Alexander Fleming went on vacation, forgetting to pick up petri dishes with cultured bacteria, and in September, when he returned to Paddington's lab, the plates were shocked by the notatum Penicillium mushroom. And the staphylococci around them had died. In that well-known anecdote, Fleming discovered penicillin. But for the pioneer antibiotic to be effective, it had to be produced in large quantities. It was very difficult to get the penicillin out of the fungus and purify it.
In 1938, biochemists Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley of the Oxford Institute of Pathology and Doctor Howard Florey began working to increase penicillin production. Without great results, they were forced to stop the activity. In 1941, the Second World War and the lack of resources led Chain and Florey to the United States, specifically to the laboratory of the Department of Agricultural Research of Peoria (Illinois).
Mary Hunt was working in that lab. We don't know much about him, who in 1980 lived and lived in Chicago or Arizona. In 1943, he was in charge of making special purchases for the laboratory; from store to store, in search of fruit, vegetables, dairy and wet meats. One day in June, he bought a melon with a yellowish mold. In the laboratory, he prepared the mold to be cut and examined, adding 72 on the label to the sample. Then, apparently, he split chunks of molten melon between his teammates and was too soft.
The melon chosen by Mary Hunt had a fungus that was Penicillium chrysogeum. Fleming was able to produce 200 times more penicillin than the fungi found (and 1,000 times more after improving the strain with ionizing radiation). In 1945 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine to Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey. Mary Hunt, on the other hand, only got a bad reputation: It was later called Moldy Mary or Mary Lizundua.
I was one of those young people who spent hours in front of the computer. Through the Internet, he discovered the thought of other people and cultures of the world, music and audiovisual media. In those days, it wasn't so common to have a device connected to the Internet, and we... [+]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing not only our daily lives, but also the way we work in companies and interact with companies through Artificial Intelligence tools or developments in the use of language technology. It is also to be hoped that in the coming years... [+]
On this rainy Sunday, we are responsible for the fate of people living in disquiet at the various conflicts that exist in the world. By far, it seems that we cannot be freed from the hands of many rulers acting towards power. Many human beings live in the world with the... [+]
In recent years, the use of computers in Education has become a common practice, so the effectiveness of electronic devices in the classroom is now being questioned. Is it really appropriate or the best way to waste time?
Computers are not in every pocket, as many families do... [+]
Things are not like that, things are like that. This phrase was recorded when I heard Gorka Urbizu's full and quiet album. I thought I'd made a great discovery with that identification, innocent! Later I realized that, besides being a motto for merchandising, it is an incomparable... [+]
Human beings have never been easy to think calmly for long periods of time, we live with the responsibility of taking our lives forward, both ours and our descendants. In this opportunity that we have had to live, we want to do things as best we can. For these responsibilities,... [+]
