The medicinal potential of penicillin was accidentally discovered by the Scottish scientist Alexander Flemming in 1928The chemical structure of penicillin was worked out using X-ray ...

They have also started to produce β-lactamases, proteins that disrupt the β-lactam structure of penicillin and inhibit its function. By 1942, strains of Staphylococcus aureus were already ...

It also subsequently became possible to mass-produce 6-aminopenicillanic acid – the molecule at the heart of the penicillin structure – and to then add side-chains of extra atoms to design a ...