Of Rabbits and Mycology - Antibiotics in Action

Of Rabbits and Mycology

To develop antibiotics, scientists have had to study a lot of fungi. They've had to look at molds that produce penicillin and actinomycetes that produce drugs like nystatin. They've also had to study the fungi that drugs like nystatin are used to kill. No doubt, mycology is at the heart of antibiotic science, and fungi were often under the microscopes of the notable scientists we've read about in this module.

In the late 1800s, fungi were the passion of a young woman by the name of Beatrix Potter. Living in England, she wasn't formally trained as a scientist, but learned mycology working as a scientific illustrator. At first drawing and painting incredibly accurate and detailed pictures of fungi for a naturalist named Charles McIntosh, Potter eventually became knowledgeable enough to conduct her own investigations and experiments, and began to formulate some of her own theories.

While technically an amateur, Potter's work was on the cutting edge of mycology at the time. In the late 1890s science was wrestling with the nature of lichens. Potter studied them intensely, and became fascinated with an idea coming from mycologists on the European continent. A new theory proposed that a lichen wasn't one living thing, but two, an alga and a fungus living intermingled with one another. The idea was scoffed at in Potter's country, though.

But Potter read the works of continental scientists. Some thought the alga and the fungus in a lichen were a parasite and a host. But Potter was drawn to the idea that the lichen was a symbiotic life form, that is, two organisms helped and needed each other to survive. She didn't invent this notion, but Potter set out to put this idea to the test. She learned a good deal about the relationship between the alga and the fungus. Algae contain chlorophyll and can photosynthesize glucose from carbon dioxide and water. This glucose provides food for both the alga and the fungus. The fungus, on the other hand, was very effective at drawing water from the air, water that both the alga and the fungus need to live, and the very water the alga uses to photosynthesize glucose. She also noted that some substance produced by the fungus had antibiotic behavior and protected both the alga and the fungus from harmful bacteria (although like Alexander Fleming, she didn't seem to think of using these compounds to fight disease in humans). The two really did seem to depend on each other to survive.

Potter wrote a paper detailing her theories in 1897. But her work was not readily accepted. There could have been a lot of reasons for this. At the time, women were not expected to work as scientists, and Potter faced a lot of sexism. What's more, Britain wasn't exactly a hotbed of mycology at the time. Based on Potter's own journals, the professional scientists she often dealt with were not the most knowledgeable in the world. Potter the amateur often found herself battling professionals who were far less informed about current biological discoveries than she was. They seem to have been slow to accept new ideas, whether from women or men, based on their rejection of new theories being put forth by continental scientists. This stale intellectual climate may have contributed to Potter's ideas being overlooked in addition to the sexism of the day. At any rate, Potter felt she needed to do more research before she could say that she'd definitely proved her theories, and withdrew her paper.

Now this is the part of the story where one might expect to read that Potter persevered against all this adversity and overcame the barriers of sexism to become the greatest mycologist the world has ever seen. We certainly like to tell stories like that, because we want to inspire yong women with gifts for science to persevere and realize their potential. But Potter's life took an odd turn at this point that drew her away from science. Potter began her scientific career as an illustrator. She was incredibly skilled at drawing and painting plants and animals. She often drew pictures of cute little bunnies and the like for children she knew. Eventually, she wrote a story to go along with her bunny pictures, and gave it the name The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The book was a smash hit, of course, and she began a new career writing children's books, such as The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, The Story of Miss Moppet, and The Tale of Two Bad Mice. In these stories Potter's animal characters are delightfully drawn with the same attention to accuracy and detail as her scientific illustrations, and convey the same love of the natural world. Her books earned her a fortune, but the demands of her new career gave her little time for science, and she sadly never returned to her research.

It wasn't until decades after Potter put forth her theories that scientists showed once and for all that Potter was right about the symbiotic relationship between the algae and the fungi that make up lichens. Today, many organisms are known to live in symbiotic relationships with each other. Even humans live in symbiosis with other life forms. We could not live without the E. coli bacteria that reside in our intestines and help us digest food. So next time you have a bowl of rabbit stew, if you aren't already thinking about Peter Rabbit, take a moment to remember the woman who created him, and who grasped before most others the importance of the symbiosis that allows you to digest that bowl of stew.
For more information, at other Web sites...

Lichens of North America — a helpful resource on lichen biology with many photographs, created by Sylvia and Steven Sharnoff and Dr. Irwin M. Brodo.
More Than Just Bunnies: The Legacy of Beatrix Potter — a biographical sketch from Literary Traveler.
The World of Peter Rabbit — the official Beatrix Potter site.

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References

Gilpatrick, Naomi. “The Secret Life of Beatrix Potter,” Natural History, Vol 81, p. 38, October 1972.

Image credits

Beatrix Potter: Courtesy of the National Trust (United Kingdom).
Scientific illustrations by Beatrix Potter: © F. Warne & Co. 2002 (tree) and courtesy of the National Trust (United Kingdom), by permission of F.Warne & Co. (mushroom).
Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights, and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations.

Copyright ©2002 The Chemical Heritage Foundation