To the teacher

This page contains some resources to help you if you visit the Science Museum (sections 1,2) or if you would like to try out the pupil activities (section 3) . The reference section also contains useful sites, books etc.

1. Details of related galleries and exhibits in the Science Museum

Health Matters

This gallery on the third floor shows developments in health and medicine in the 20th Century. There are a variety of displays and panels related to penicillin and antibiotics.
The full text of one such panel can be found in Section 2.


Making the Modern World

This gallery shows the history of industrialisation from 1750-2000.Objects related to the penicllin story in this gallery are:
* Actual mould produced by Fleming
* Penicillin lozenges 1949
* Shallow fermentation flask with mould, used for first production.


Glimpses of Medical History

Life-size scenes showing how it felt to be a patient and doctor through time.
Specifically:
* First World War Dressing Station, Western Front
* Antiseptic operation 1877
* Bacteriological Lab. 1955
* Lister's ward 1865


Science and Art of Medicine

In this gallery, the display cases each have a alpha-numerical identification and a map of the location of each case can be found just inside the door of the exhibition.

Displays relevant to this topic are:
L20. Public Health, Chlorea
S7. Drugs and Disease, lab medicine 20th Century sulphonamides and antibiotics
S9. Drug resistance, uncontrolled use in third world
S12. Drug manufacture, pharmaceutical still
S13. Bacteriology in the last 80 yrs
S16. Bacteriology, ecology/communicable disease
S2. Photomicrographs of bacteria
T40. Respiratory medicine, TB, other cures plus antibiotics
V2. Third World health, prevention
V3. Water supplies and disease
V10. Effect of western drugs
U4-U9. treatment of casualties in WW1
U10. Second World War
U14. Treatment of wounded
VD poster warning


Chemical Industry
This gallery on the second floor of the Science Museum deals with developments within the chemical industry and contains displays on:
* Research by computer modelling, new drugs
* Penicillin video 1945, promoting discovery and use of penicillin
* Poster, sample of Fleming's penicillin, (I think)
* Mould showing antibiotic effect
* Mention of early fermenters, first penicillin extractor 1941
* Fermenters, BBC program, talk, some graphs, growth curves, CO2/O2 ; effect of nutrient depletion,
* Fermenter apparatus
* Pressure cycle fermenter, SCP production at Billingham

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2. Details of Health Matters script

At St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, in 1928 Alexander Fleming found that a substance made by a mould killed bacteria grown in the laboratory. Other scientists, had noticed this before. Some tried to extract pure penicillin from the mould . There wasn't much success or interest . Enough pure penicillin to test on a patient was made in 1941 (Oxford University). It revived Reserve Constable Albert Alexander, dying of blood poisoning from a rose bush scratch. He died 5 days later , when the penicillin ran out

In wartime Oxford, penicillin was made in biscuits and bedpans. New ceramic containers helped, but with 100l of culture broth needed to make one day's dose, production had to be scaled up. US scientists and pharmaceutical companies used hugh tanks and deep fermentation, familiar to brewers. The Distillers Company ran a penicillin plant for the Ministry of Health from 1945-64.

Penicillin was a wartime asset kept secret by the allies. British and US supplies were for military use only. Wounded troops benefited and much early penicillin was used to treat VD- scourge of the North Africa Campaign. After 1945, British and US civilians got penicillin. Much of Europe depended on a flourishing black market.

Scientists thought that once they knew the chemical structure of penicillin, they'd soon be making it themselves. But a satisfactory process was never found. Penicillin V, effective by mouth, was produced by altering the mould's growing conditions. In 1957 the central , unchanging part of the penicillin molecule was isolated (Beecham Research Lab). Scientists used this to create new semi-synthetic penicillins.

Penicillin's success led to pharmaceutical firms to search for more antibiotics. Moulds and Fungi are common place in soil, so thousands of soil samples were screened in the 40's and 50's with several successes. The cephlosporins, now the biggest selling broad spectrum antibiotics in the world, were found in sewage in Sardinia.
Nowadays, new antibiotics are often made by chemical manipulation of known ones in laboratories.

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3. Notes on Pupil activities

Safety aspects

• Practical Biotechnology, a guide for schools and colleges produced by National Centre for Biotechnology, University of Reading or visit their website
• Microbiology. HMI guide for schools and further education (1990)
• Topics in Safety (2001 ) ASE revised  ed  ISBN 086357 316 9

1. Fleming's discovery, if you wish to repeat  the original experiment you can't use Staphlycoccus, but  Micrococcus instead . This work is suitable for Standard grade, Biotechnology topic/KS4 or 16plus pupils

2. How does penicillin and other antibiotics work; Advanced Higher/A-level
this allows pupils to revise other biology topics such as protein synthesis

3. Finding out which antibiotic is best
This is a classic experiment found in most good biotechnology textbook. The pictures can be used to collect data or the experiment can be repeat as pupil experiment or teacher demonstration use    E.coli B , Bacillus subtilis, Micrococcus luteus cultures

4. Glossary notes, could be made up by Advanced Higher /A-level pupils or given as notes to Standard grade

sensitive; bacteria killed by antibiotic
resistant; bacteria not killed by antibiotic
specific/ narrow spectrum; antibiotic acts on a narrow range of bacteria
broad spectrum; antibiotic acts on a wide range of bacteria
gram positive; stains violet with gram stain ( based on properties of bacterial cell wall)
gram negative; stains red with gram stain
ribosomes; organelle where protein production takes place, free in cytoplasm of bacteria
metabolism; reactions in cytoplasm of cell including respiration
mRNA; takes the genetic message from the DNA in the nucleus to the ribosome
semisynthetic; the basic molecule is manipulated by adding side chains etc

5. Problems with antibiotics
allergies, see www.mayohealth.org

resistance, this can be linked to evolution in action and health  education issues.

• work with TB ( MRC research update) Outbreak in Leicester April 2001
• resistance bugs in hospital

6. Commercial production of penicillin
A suspension of spores is added to a starter medium then added to a  substrate eg corn steep liquor   (carbohydrate) plus additives into a fermenter. Oxygen is critical , temperature at 24degC, slightly alkaline. Fermentation takes about a week, the mycelium is separated by filtering , antibiotic is extracted, solvents are  used to purify the antibiotic. The penicillin extracted is a mixture, the main one is Penicillin G, it can be converted into different compounds eg ampicillin and cephalosporins.         (ref Taylor)

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