Metabolic Flux Bottleneck (2D)

This 2D companion runs the exact same buffer-and-flux model as the 3D version through a flat, top-down canvas view built for reading the numbers rather than orbiting a scene: five reaction chambers are drawn side by side as fill-level bars, each with its own enzyme-activity slider, a bottleneck banner names whichever step is currently slowest, and live readouts track overall pathway flux, the theoretical maximum set by that slowest step, and total final product made. Substrate metabolites drift inside each chamber in proportion to how full its buffer is, and small dots travel along the connecting pipes whenever material actually moves — so a bottleneck chamber visibly fills up while every chamber downstream of it runs comparatively empty, making the control point in the pathway directly visible instead of implied.