DescriptionSteptomyces griseus was isolated by Krainsky in 1914 from Russian soil during the outbreak of World War I. In 1915, Dr. Selman A.Waksman, a microbiologist at the Agricultural Department of Rutger’s University, and an assistant were studying actinomycetes when they isolated from New Jersey soil a strain in which they called Actinomyces griseus. Dr. Waksman was studying how certain substances enabled soil microbes to destroy each other and streptomyces, he found, was able to survive in the soil even under unfavorable conditions. In 1943, Actinomyces griseus was changed to Streptomycin griseus. That same year, Albrez Schatz, an assistant of Dr. Waksman, isolated two actinomyces strains which proved to be identical to the strain discovered in 1915, yet somehow these two new strains had antibiotic behavior. Dr. Waksman named this antibiotic “streptomycin.” It was later determined that the S.griseus strain that give rise to the antibiotic was able to produce two variants, one of which had antibiotic activity and one which had no antibiotic activity. Waksman, along with Schatz and Bugie, found streptomycin to be particularly effective against the tuberculosis bacteria, tubercle bacillus. Feldman and Hinshaw, two physicians from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, studied streptomycin’s effect in guinea pigs with tuberculosis and eventually in human tuberculosis. Feldman and Hinshaw found streptomycin to be effective in curing two extreme classes of tuburculosis: tuberculous meningitis and military tuberculosis. In 1952, Dr. Selman Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of streptomycin as the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. (Taken from MicrobeWiki)
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