It's Veteran's Day in the USA, Remembrance Day in Canada and England, and, while it may be called something different in other countries of the world, a day to remember the sacrifices of those who defend our freedom. Did you know there's a connection between World War II and one of the greatest discoveries in biotechnology? In the late 1920's Alexander Fleming made a chance discovery, that Penicillum mold, while non-toxic to humans, secreted an antibacterial substance. In 1929, his paper on the topic did not garner much interest, but during WWII, two chemists at Oxford, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, isolated the substance, called penicillin, and discovered it kept it's antibacterial properties when dehydrated and stored as a powder.
Development of this substance into a drug was expedited by the need for an antibiotic to treat soldiers injured in the war. Thus, penicillin saved the lives of many veterans, and, as the first antibiotic, is one of the most significant achievements in the history of biotechnology.
Scientists would later discover restriction enzymes while investigating bacterial defenses against antibiotics. Antibiotics and restriction enzymes are two very important tools that made it possible to develop techniques for cloning and studying genes.
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