Thienamycin

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A broad-spectrum antibiotic of the carbapenem class originally produced by the soil bacterium Streptomyces cattleya and used against many bacterial infections
2. An antibiotic substance first isolated from the soil microbe Streptomyces cattleya that acts against a wide range of bacteria
3. A potent beta-lactam antibiotic obtained naturally from a Streptomyces bacterium and effective against both gram-positive and gram-negative organisms

Etymology: Thienamycin was isolated in the late 1970s from the soil bacterium Streptomyces cattleya, and it was the first natural carbapenem antibiotic discovered. Its name is a compound of "thiene," the chemical root for the sulfur-containing five-membered ring that makes up part of its structure, and "-mycin," the standard suffix for antibiotics derived from Streptomyces, whose name comes from Greek "mykes," meaning fungus, a reference to the mould-like appearance of these bacteria. "Thiene" itself derives from "thiophene," a name chemists coined in the 1880s from Greek "theion," sulfur, and "phaino," to show or shine. The "-mycin" ending follows a long pattern: streptomycin (1944) was the first of the family, and later antibiotics such as erythromycin and vancomycin inherited the same suffix. Thienamycin is therefore a purely technical coinage of the twentieth century, built from chemical and biological roots rather than from any older word for antibiotics.