The Limiting Factor

Back in the day, I was a Biology major. College. I was required to take eight courses of Biology including two labs. Since I was also pre-med, I had to take two Physics, two inorganic and two organic Chemistries and two Calculus classes. True. Though I did love science in high school, in college, it was another matter. A bit much.

However, what I did love about science and what I still love about it is the way rational thinking is built upon itself to conclusions that you can count on. Every step has to be solid, and if it is, then you can know where things are headed. Also, you can count it, graph it, write it down. Very enjoyable, in a way, in a world that is so topsy-turvy.

One beautiful concept was very simple and also very visible when conducting experiments: limiting factors. The concept of limiting factors is simple. If you run out of a reagent but still have more of something else, well then, the reagent is the limiting factor. You are reagent shy so your reaction slows down to a homeostasis that gives you a reading of, “all done”.

Another limiting factor can be the build up of waste. If you have a load of bacteria in a dish and the bacteria have access to lots of food (say glucose)---and the glucose is in such abundance that no matter how much the bacteria ingest, there’s plenty more glucose to be had, the bacteria will continue to multiply. Eventually one or two limiting factors take over. One is, you can end up with so many bacteria that they start to crowd each other out and so no more bacteria can arise. But usually before that happens, you have the limiting factor of waste. The waste products of the bacteria start getting in the way of the ingestion and the respiration and breakdown of the glucose. Waste, in the face of great abundance, becomes the limiting factor. And the bacteria must slow down their reproductive efforts. In fact, they just do.

You see where I’m going.

We’re the bacteria. The earth is the Petri dish. What will happen naturally, in our carbon-dioxide wasted earth, is we’ll slow down on reproduction because we are suffering from the limiting factor of great waste. It will be interesting to see how this waste actually physically slows down our reproduction.

Seems to me we cannot control ourselves—being driven just like bacteria are driven—by the force of acquisition. But then nature steps in. Fascinating, really.