penicillin

Penicillin kills or inhibits certain bacteria. This topic is part of Medicine within Science & Nature. This page currently draws on 11 supporting questions, with answers and bonus facts available below.

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penicillin trivia questions

Penicillin is what type of medicine?

Answer: Antibiotic

Bonus fact: Penicillin kills or inhibits certain bacteria.

Who discovered penicillin's antibacterial effect?

Answer: Alexander Fleming

Bonus fact: Fleming noticed mold suppressing bacteria in 1928.

Penicillin primarily interferes with bacterial construction of what?

Answer: Cell walls

Bonus fact: Beta-lactam antibiotics block enzymes involved in peptidoglycan cross-linking.

Who discovered penicillin after noticing that mold inhibited bacterial growth in a laboratory dish?

Answer: Alexander Fleming

Bonus fact: Alexander Fleming observed penicillin’s antibacterial effect in 1928.

Penicillin and other beta-lactam antibiotics primarily interfere with the construction of what bacterial structure?

Answer: Cell wall

Bonus fact: Beta-lactam antibiotics inhibit enzymes involved in building bacterial peptidoglycan cell walls.

Fleming made his penicillin discovery in what decade?

Answer: 1920s

Bonus fact: He observed the effect in 1928.

What type of microorganism produced the substance Fleming called penicillin?

Answer: Mold

Bonus fact: Penicillium mold released the antibacterial substance.

Who discovered penicillin in 1928?

Answer: Alexander Fleming

Bonus fact: Howard Florey and Ernst Chain later developed penicillin’s medical potential and shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Fleming.

Which technique did Dorothy Hodgkin use to determine the structures of molecules such as penicillin and vitamin B12?

Answer: X-ray crystallography

Bonus fact: Hodgkin’s structural work helped establish X-ray crystallography as a major tool for studying biological molecules.

Alexander Fleming discovered what antibiotic?

Answer: Penicillin

Bonus fact: Fleming observed penicillin's antibacterial effect in 1928.

Alexander Fleming is famous for discovering what antibiotic?

Answer: Penicillin

Bonus fact: Fleming noticed bacteria-free zones around a Penicillium mold.

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