Penicillium glaucum

Penicillium glaucum
Gorgonzola an Italian cheese containing "veins" of Penicillium glaucum
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Fungi
Phylum:	Ascomycota
Subphylum:	Pezizomycotina
Class:	Eurotiomycetes
Order:	Eurotiales
Family:	Trichomaceae
Genus:	Penicillium
Species:	P. glaucum
Binomial name
Penicillium glaucum

Penicillium glaucum is a mold that is used in the making of some types of blue cheese, including Bleu de Gex, Rochebaron, and some varieties of Bleu d'Auvergne and Gorgonzola. (Other blue cheeses, including Bleu de Bresse, Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage, Brebiblu, Cambozola, Cashel Blue, Danish blue, Fourme d'Ambert, Fourme de Montbrison, Lanark Blue, Roquefort, Shropshire Blue, and Stilton use Penicillium roqueforti.)

In 1874, Sir William Roberts, a physician from Manchester noted that cultures of the mold did not display bacterial contamination. Louis Pasteur would build on this discovery, noting that Bacillus anthracis would not grow in the presence of the related mold Penicillium notatum. Its antibiotic powers were independently discovered and tested on animals by French physician Ernest Duchesne,^[1] but his thesis in 1897 was ignored.

Penicillium glaucum feeds on only one optical isomer of tartaric acid, which makes it extremely useful in advanced higher chemistry projects on chirality.

See also

• Discoveries of anti-bacterial effects of penicillium moulds before Fleming

References