Staphyloccus Bacteria Lab Report

Fleming, a young Scottish research scientist with a profitable side practice treating the syphilis infections of prominent London artists, was pursuing his pet theory--that his own nasal mucus had antibacterial effects--when he left a culture plate smeared with Staphylococcus bacteria on his lab bench while he went on a two-week holiday. When he returned, he noticed a clear halo surrounding the yellow-green growth of a mold that had accidentally contaminated the plate. Unknown to him, a spore of a rare variant called Penicillium notatum had drifted in from a mycology lab one floor below. Luck would have it that Fleming had decided not to store his culture in a warm incubator, and that London was then hit by a cold spell, giving the mold a chance to grow. Later, as the temperature rose, the Staphylococcus
John Tyndall had done so in 1875 and, likewise, D.A. Gratia in 1925. However, unlike his predecessors, Fleming recognized the importance of his findings. He would later say, "My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist." Although he went on to perform additional experiments, he never conducted the one that would have been key: injecting penicillin into infected mice. Fleming's initial work was reported in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, but it would remain in relative obscurity for a decade. By 1932, Fleming had abandoned his work on penicillin. He would have no further role in the subsequent development of this or any other antibiotic, aside from happily providing other researchers with samples of his mold. It is said that he lacked both the chemical expertise to purify penicillin and the conviction that drugs could cure serious infections. However, he did safeguard his unusual strain of Penicillium notatum for posterity. The baton of antibiotic development was passed to