Penny, The Cement Runner

Say you are the architect of the wall of a large fortress. Now as time pass the kingdom grows and so does it's fortress, as in charge of the wall it's your duty to make the necessary readjustments to it. One day during the process of a renovation you find your cement gone, stolen by some guy named Penny. You've no idea where he came from and where he took all your goods to. With the cement gone the new wall was left unfinished, leaving a hole, letting in me and my raiding troops who came the very next day.  The picture below shows a classified image of Penny who looted your goods.

Now I can't praise you for what Penny did, can I?

                

A contradicting event occurred at Mr. Fleming's lab about hundred years ago, he found a mould in the middle of a bacterial sample at his lab, it was understood that the mould had produced a substance that evades the bacteria from getting close to it.

What's in common with my hypothetical story with you as the architect who got cursed by the townspeople and what Mr. Fleming found in his bacterial sample?

 Well, what the substance he found, does and what Penny did are the same.

See, a bacteria has got a cell wall, a protective shield that protects it from all the foes it has to deal with, like our immune system for example. As the bacteria cell matures the defensive layer needs to be rebuilt, the adhesive material that the cell use to build this wall is called Peptidoglycan.

                      Peptidoglycan = Cement

The substance Alexander Fleming found that day had the ability to bond with peptidoglycan making it unusable for the building of the new wall, leaving it weak and unstable, letting in the raiders like antibodies that destroy the bacteria which infects the body. Fleming's mould which later got named as Penicillin was actually destroying the cell walls of the bacteria present around it, exposing it to thin air, which eventually destroyed it.

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2023