Eli5: How is penicillin created from something potentially toxic such as mold?
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Toxicity is all in the dose.
Even water and oxygen are potentially toxic to us if you have too much of either. What is “too much” will vary for everything. For some things a very small amount will kill you while others require you to have very large amounts before it’s toxic.
So, the main thing that ensures penicillin isn’t toxic is the controlling of the dose. If you took too much, it would still be bad for you, which is why we regulate it.
It is created naturally by the mold, and it can be isolated or extracted from the mold to be used for medicine. Many other medicines come from nature, and we extract them from the source and control the dosage to get the effects we want.
The mold synthesizes. You isolate it. There are different techniques to isolate molecules depending on their properties. By isolating a drug and / or controlling the dosage we harvest their medicinal properties.
As an aside: mold isn’t just one species, there are thousands of different species of fungi we call “mold”. A tiny handful of those species cause us problems (eg, they grow in our houses and emit toxins, or they ruin our food and agriculture, or directly cause disease), and a tiny handful of them are beneficial to us in one way or another (either they live in our gut and help digestion, or they’re used to make certain foods such as cheese, or we use them to break down compost)
Don’t lump all molds into one bucket! That would be like visiting a farm, remembering Great White Sharks, and saying “how can we get eggs, milk and wool from something as potentially deadly as a vertebrate?”
Penicillin is just one of many mold.
The unique thing is that it produces toxins against other mold, which is why it works for humans. Black mold and others, create toxins that effect humans.
The mold that makes penicillin produces it to protect itself from bacteria. We can isolate the penicillin and use it for our own antibiotics.
Remember mold is a type of fungus and there are many, many species. Some are beneficial like the mold we use in cheese-making, or are harmful like black mold that can grow in houses and cause respiratory illness. Many are neutral. Very diverse group of organisms.
Penicillin (and other antibiotics) **is** a toxic substance, that the mold uses in chemical warfare to assert it’s “territory”.
Many (most) microorganisms do that.
Not all toxins are toxic to all organisms. (Like the mold producing Penicillin would not prosper very well, if in died to Penicillin). The biggest problem with bacteria that cause our ilnesses is that they produce toxins that are actually toxic to us.
Our symbiotic bacteria also produce chemicals directed at killing microorganisms, but non toxic to us.
Luckilly Penicilin is toxic to many types of bacteria but not to us.
(Fun fact: fungi cells are more similar to animal cells than to bacteria, which may help explain, why there are some fungi toxins, that do not affect animal – and human – cells. But also it is very difficult to make fungicides, that would be completelly harmless to humans).
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