Penicillium chrysogenum

Penicillium chrysogenum
P. notatum; P. rubens 

Type	fungi
Domain	fruit skins, deep wet soil

This soil fungus grows wild in deep wet soils, on citrus fruits and some melons, growing in colonies with a blue-green   mature center surrounded by a white growth zone. When growth is constrained due to lack of nutrition, the mature section may produce drops of a golden-yellow fluid containing penicillin G.

Uses

Primary

• Key producer of WHO LEM component penicillin G

Character

A Penicillium colony starts out gray or white, turns blue, and finally changes to blue-green. It typically develops a white outer ring.

Another type of mold that resembles Penicillium is Aspergillus. How do you tell Penicillium and Aspergillus apart?  The best way to identify Penicillium is to view it under magnification. Penicillium is branched, like a fan. Aspergillus is straight, like a long stalk with a fuzzy ball at the end.

Isolation

1. Put deep narrow punctures through the skin of a citrus fruit like a lemon or orange, allowing some of the juice to collect on the outside of the fruit.
2. Place the fruit, whole, in a container in a dark, warm place for 3-6 days.

Culturing

media

• Penicillin Production
• US patent 2932607 "Production of Penicillin"
  Link courtesy Google
• US patent 2399840 "Method for the isolation of penicillin from aqueous solutions"
  Link courtesy Google
• Make Penicillin at home
  courtesy Doom and Bloom. ^{local copy}

Yield

Important

A typical course of Penicillin G for an adult is 125 to 312 milligrams four to six times per day for 10 to 14 days. That is a total 5-25g of penicillin consumed. As far as wild strains go, the Peoria strain from which all modern strains are derived was the best of many wild strains examined. In proper media, it produced 150mg of penicillin per liter of growth media.

Assuming

• Wild strains will yield 15mg per liter of broth
• 100% of the produced penicillin is recovered from the broth

  300-1500L of fermentation broth would produce one course of penicillin.