Eli5: How is penicillin created from something potentially toxic such as mold?

Question

Eli5: How is penicillin created from something potentially toxic such as mold?

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Answer 1

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?”