(295b) Monod's Growth Kinetics. Is There a Rationale for It?

All that is known about microbial metabolism and growth would seem to demand a mathematical description of such unimaginable complexity that any form of conformity with Monod's simple growth kinetics should set the rationalists on the trail of some reasonable explanation. To air such a quest is to honor Rutherford Aris, the scholar, who constantly sought to find musicality in mathematical models of chemical systems. His expositions of the beauty of stoichiometry and its algebraic implications, the kinetics of continuous reaction mixtures, and issues connected with lumping of kinetics of large systems all represent scholarly accomplishments of exemplary character!

Appeal to the likeness of microbial metabolism to enzyme-substrate kinetics is too frail to serve as a rational base for their mathematical similarity, for the bewildering diversity of enzymes and substrates involved in metabolism could hardly yield to the simplicity of a single such reaction. It is the objective of this talk then to explore the circumstances, which will conceal the complexity of metabolism behind an ordinary single substrate enzyme kinetic expression.