I Became a Plague Doctor in a Romance Fantasy Novel

Chapter 68. Fleming, Alexander Fleming (3)

Chapter 68. Fleming, Alexander Fleming (3)

I looked at Amy. She was a lot different than Istina. Amy was a bit more short-sighted, but in turn, she talked a lot more.

“I’m telling you, structure and function. The reason bacteria can’t grow around the blue mold in a petri dish, it’s a schematic representation of the mold monopolizing resources that the bacteria could have taken.”

“Uh-huh…”

“You get what I’m saying?”

Amy nodded and pulled out a scrap of paper, writing something down on it.

“Just a sec,”

“So. You’re saying that to fight over resources with bacteria, mold creates a substance that kills bacteria?”

Right. Amy scratched her head.

“Yeah.”

“I get the logic, but it also feels a bit of a leap. It sounds like there has to be some big difference between mold and bacteria for that to hold true.”

The fundamental difference between mold and bacteria.

Actually. The reason mold produces a substance that kills bacteria but doesn’t kill people, it’s because mold is more similar to people than bacteria are.

Mold and people are eukaryotes, and bacteria are prokaryotes. Penicillin only selectively kills bacteria by interfering with the synthesis of the peptidoglycan cell wall, which is only found in bacteria.

But how do I explain this?

Let’s try to express it as simply as possible.

“Mold is way more complex than bacteria, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Let’s just wait a bit.

Since we prepared a thousand petri dishes, one strain of the target blue mold is bound to appear. Then, we can make penicillin.

And the next day.

It must be summer, because the bacteria and mold are growing a bit faster than expected. We gathered to find our targets in the petri dishes.

I wish we could find them quickly and get rid of them. There are a thousand petri dishes stacked up, it’s making me dizzy.

“Looks like most of them have grown, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We just have to find the dishes where the bacteria hasn’t grown, or where it’s grown messy. Not sure if there’ll be any.”

If we’re unlucky, there might not be any.

Out of hundreds of types of blue mold, only a few create antibacterial substances. There’s a chance that kind of blue mold isn’t even in that warehouse, right?

Me, Istina, and Amy.

The three of us started the selection process. Strains without sterilizing power go straight to the trash, and we have to isolate the strains where the bacteria grew a bit less.

Just looking at a thousand stacked petri dishes made me sigh. Will it take an hour?

I looked at Istina.

“We had a thousand petri dishes in the lab?”

“Yeah. I went all the way to the warehouse too.”

Wow, that’s a lot.

Istina shrugged.

I never told them to make a thousand. I never even imagined they’d prepare so many. Istina really is smart, after all.

It might be better to finish this quickly when we’re not busy. Right now, we only have one hospitalized patient, and no other projects.

After sorting for a while like that, Amy raised her hand like a gold prospector who’d found a gold nugget.

“Is this it?”

I looked at the petri dish. And yeah, it does look like the bacteria hasn’t grown as much around the mold?

“Guess so? Put it to one side.”

“Yes!”

Thirty minutes later. 995 petri dishes were dumped in the bleach-filled trash can.

We grew a thousand strains of blue mold from a thousand bread pieces, and five of them showed even a little sterilizing power.

“Good.”

“Still, we did find them.”

“What do we do now?”

We’d found our golden goose. Now we had to wait for it to lay its eggs. We had to grow the five penicillin strains we’d just found.

“First, we’ll grow the strains that showed sterilizing power again on bread. We’ll also repeat the experiment testing sterilizing power in the petri dishes.”

“Yes.”

“After the research is published, I plan to distribute the sterilizing strains we found as much as possible for further research.”

Istina tilted her head.

“Couldn’t we make money with this?”

“Would that work?”

Of course there were ethical issues too.

Even in the original world, it took 20 years to commercialize penicillin. Holding back medical advancements just to make money 20 years later is… well, not good.

It felt like too distant a future.

Anyway.

Next step. We prepared five bread baskets and put the mold on top. It would spread between the bread on its own.

And so, five bread baskets were placed in the warehouse. This time, only the strains with sterilizing power. I put the basket down and left the warehouse.

“Let’s just hold on a bit. Everyone did great.”

“Thank you.”

Thanks to Istina making a thousand at once, the discovery of penicillin seemed like it’d be significantly sped up. By weeks from the original plan?

Gonna have a lot to say at the conference. The method of culturing the blue mold, the verification of its bactericidal properties, and even the way to chemically extract the penicillin.

The Academy’s bakery.

Anabeth watched the professor who came in today, too. A young professor, sometimes with a student in tow, sometimes in his gown.

That professor sometimes bought cookies, saying they were for his students. Sometimes the students came too. A few days ago he even bought a hundred morning rolls.

Anabeth had been thinking.

Why does he buy a hundred morning rolls? He definitely isn’t buying them for himself.

Who’s he giving a hundred to?

After a few days of this, Anabeth couldn’t contain her curiosity and asked the professor directly. It was just recently.

– Are you a professor? It looks like you’re having a good day, buying so much bread.

– Ah. I work at the hospital.

– Oh…!

The professor hurried out of the bakery. Well, he never talked much anyway. Maybe a word or two with his students.

Anabeth thought about it some more. A professor who works at a hospital, he must be a healer.

Buying a whole bunch of bread in the morning, it must be to give to patients or hospital staff? That’d make sense logically.

Maybe to hospital staff too busy to eat properly, or poor folks who got sick from skipping meals.

She hadn’t asked specifically, though.

Since the professor said they work at the hospital, it’s obvious this bread’s going to someone sick, or someone taking care of someone sick!

Anyway. The person getting that bread was definitely someone who really needed warm bread.

For use at the hospital, they said. Anabet, with that thought, made the morning rolls with extra care.

If you work hard, you can change the world, even just a little, right? The hundreds of morning rolls the professor was buying, they’d surely make the days of hundreds of people a little better.

*Ding-!*

Today too, that professor opened the bakery door and came in. Anabet turned to check if the bread was ready.

Judging by the smell of freshly baked bread, and the smell of butter, it seemed they were just done.

“Hello!”

The professor seemed a bit busy today too. They were checking their wristwatch even as they walked in. Are there a lot of sick people at the hospital?

“Uh, yeah, give me a hundred of the morning rolls.”

“You didn’t come with your student today?”

“That kid’s busy too.”

Anabet fussed about, dividing the morning rolls into paper bags. Since there weren’t just one or two rolls, putting them in took quite a bit of time.

Anabet quickly handed over the bread.

“Here you go.”

“Oh, thanks for your hard work.”

“You’re welcome!”

The professor left the bakery carrying the bread in their arms. Only the warm smell of bread was left in the bakery.

Anabet let out a sigh of relief. The professor came again today. Thanks to that professor, the bakery’s sales doubled.

I hope the people who eat that bread are happy. I put extra butter in them, with special care. Their day will be a bit better, won’t it!

– That’s what Anabeth was thinking.

The bread bags were heavy with the scent of butter.

I grabbed the bread and headed back to the lab. Ten bags of ten rolls each. Time to go cultivate some mold, I’d already found the problem strain anyway.

Now, just neatly isolate the strain, and make sure it grows well. Then I can hand it out to any interested professors at the next conference.

They can either grow it themselves, or do research on it.

That’ll do it.

Amy was sitting at one side of the lab, peering at blue mold through a microscope. Her effort was admirable, but could she really figure anything out that way?

“Has it grown much?”

“Yes.”

You wouldn’t see the penicillin with your eyes. It’s a good researcher’s stance, sure. But, what exactly was she looking at?

“I was looking at what the professor said.”

“Oh. What was that?”

“That…the fungi have a more complex structure than bacteria, right? I was looking at that.”

Right.

Fungi, like slime molds, or mushrooms, or spores. They create these complex structures, allowing them to survive in environments where bacteria cannot proliferate.

“Can I eat a morning roll?”

“Uh, those? Don’t eat them for now. It’d be a problem if you confused growing mold with eating it.”

Amy nodded her head.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Where’d Istina go?”

“She went down to the storage to check on the bread.”

She’s working hard too.

“I’m going to teach the concept of antibiotics in the upcoming class, and you know the conference in Whitby, right? I’ll be presenting a paper there.”

“Yes.”

“Teacher Amy is going too, right?”

“Ah, yes. I want to go!”

That’s settled then. I need to prep for the class, but should I bring the mold? I don’t know if the cultures will grow nicely by then.