Why is a high surface to volume ratio important to cells?
In: Biology
Diffusion. Diffusion is a natural effect that just happens. When there is an unbalance of something, like molecules things tend to balance themselves. (Entropy, over time gradients dissappear. So if you got two liquids with different concentration of whatever they will mix to create one liquid with no concentration difference.) So as diffusion happens on its own it doesn’t require energy so its the most efficient way to exchange molecules. But it can only happen between the cell’s edge/membrane and the surrounding stuff. And you want to get the molecules to go all over the cell. So you cant have too much volume with little area. As a cell’s size grows its volume grows faster than its surface area. So the larger you are the less effective diffusion becomes, thats why your lung’s surface area is super large, the individual cells use diffusion to exchange air, so you need a lot.
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