How Penicillin works revealed by scientists

Penicillin, the wonder drug discovered in 1928, works in ways that are still mysterious almost a century later. It is revealed by Scientists that one of the oldest and most widely used antibiotics, penicillin, attacks enzymes that build the bacterial cell wall. Once that wall is breached, bacteria die allowing us to recover from infection. Researchers have now shown that penicillin and its variants also set in motion a toxic malfunctioning of the cell’s wall-building machinery, dooming the cell to a futile cycle of building and then immediately destroying that wall. t seems to be a common theme with some of the best antibiotics that we have. They don’t just inhibit the enzyme they are targeting; they actually convert that target so that whatever activity it has left becomes toxic. Penicillin and similar drugs of a same class called beta-lactams are derived from natural antibiotics produced by fungi that evolved effective ways to kill bacteria. The drugs prevent the bacteria from properly building their cell walls. Penicillin is powerful, but it’s still vulnerable to resistance. When the cell walls of bacteria are disintegrating, they fight back with enzymes called beta-lactamases that slice the beta-lactam molecules and keep them from attaching to their targets.