I just made a new keyword, i.e. newantibiotic. What's really interesting here is that this antibiotic came from bacteria, IMHO. Our usual experience is to discover these drugs in fungi. Penicillin was discovered accidentally in an old mold culture by Alexander Fleming.
“What’s really interesting here is that this antibiotic came from bacteria...”
It’s a seminal breakthrough that gives us a whole new way of looking at antibiotic chemistry. Real Nobel Prize stuff, if that still means anything. We get to go back and search other coastal areas for variations of this molecule.
“Penicillin was discovered accidentally in an old mold culture by Alexander Fleming.”
If I remember the story, he became interested in a blue mold growing on some orange peels left out near a window.
(and if that isn’t the story, it should be :)
In sediment off shore from Santa Barbara.
Could this be from OIL seepage?
It stands to reason that sooner or later a bacillus would use chemical warfare against the competition...maybe there are more antibiotics out there that fit the same mold (no pun intended).