Aokabi: Blue Mold

Blue mold is very useful for human life, such as Antibiotic, foodstuffs like a Gorgonzola and Roquefort cheese the composition of citric acid or nucleic acid is utilized widely as useful bacterium. Still, if mold grow on our food, people feels of displeasure, but blue mold don’t make a mycotoxin, that is why, they are a completely harmless mold.

As soon as a colony is formed from spore which is turns blue, they begin to make the next generation and they look like always dyeing blue so a blue mold is called “Aokabi” in Japan.

Blue mold is a generic name of blue mold that belong to Penicillium genus and Aspergillus genus and gonozooid is not discovered, and it is said that they only do asexual reproduction, therefor they are classed as an imperfect fungus. P. chrysogenum and P. motatumo is known to abstract of penicillin from their metabolite, however P. motatumo that is the first species of penicillin that was discovered lower than P. chrysogenum, so now we use P. chrysogenum to abstract penicillin. From P. grisofulvm’s metabolite, we can abstract griseofulvin and P.camemberti is used to make blue cheese. What is penicillin and griseofulvin’s action? Penicillin affect a bacterium and unites Peptidoglycan synthetase and checks the enzyme’s activity, then bacterium can make little Peptidoglycant which is a main substance of bacterium’s cell wall. Accordingly their cell wall gradually become thinner with every cell division. From this reaction, cell division is repressed (bacteriostasis action) moreover, water flow into cell because the inner of cell osmotic pressure is higher than outer one, they can’t endure of turgor pressure and finally, do bacteriolysis(bactericidal action). Griseofulvin affects a bacterium too, griseofulvin unites a bacterium’s microtubule and check mitosis (bacteriostasis action), but it is said this substance have carcinogenicity.

Blue mold is one of most universal mold of the world and their spore always fly around the sky therefore they can be born anytime and anywhere, but they like a high humidity so they easily grow a colony in such a place. Also in Kochi, we can see blue mold on our foods most of the year.

Well then, how is their body formed from the spore? First, spore grows a conidiophores which supports a conidium into the air second, a cape of conidiophores branches and becomes verticillate condition that is called penicillus. Third, several conidiogenous cell save formed on top of penicillus and a lump of conidiogenous cell is called conidia head. Then it produces a conidium just like germinating from conidiogenous cell. When a conidium finish, next conidium is made from conidiogenous cell and become like a rosary. Finally it is sprinkled as a spore and buds in other places, then grows new hypha and makes new colony.

Penicillin, which is discovered with Alexander Fleming from P. motatumo’s in 1928 metabolite, is known as the first antibiotic substance in the world. It is great discovery but it is said that penicillin was found because Alexander Fleming was a slovenly person. One day he was cultivating staphy lococcus at a laboratory dish but he neglected it at the window and by chance, blue mold made a colony in this dish and he looked at it. The moment he looks at it, he noticed that staphy lococcus don’t grow in circumference of blue mold’s colony then he concluded that blue mold makes a chemical substance to repel bacteria then he named this chemical substance “penicillin”. Like this, blue mold has a number of useful points so many people will pay attention to this mold but excellent discovery might be in happening and mistake.