Penicillin

Political activist and Nobel winner Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin pioneered X-ray crystallography to discover the molecular structures of penicillin and insulin.

The former Columbia University professor’s early work helped illuminate the structure of penicillin, allowing chemists to make variants and broaden the scope of antibiotic treatments.

Scientists work out the specific genes and biochemical steps required for digesting the very drugs designed to kill microbes.

By sequencing and analyzing the genomes of more than 20 species of Penicillium fungi, researches uncovered genes encoding for numerous bioactive compounds, including antibiotics.

Ancient hominins in northern Spain ate mushrooms, pine nuts, and moss, and may have used Penicillium mold and other natural products to sooth toothache pain.

Did 20th-century pharmaceutical and technological advances shape modern sexual behaviors?

Fungi in 100 million year-old seafloor sediments could possess novel antibiotics.

The drug may very well be one of mankind’s greatest discoveries.