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BIOCHEMISTRY In a cell, the Keq for a reaction is 500. Is this a spontaneous rea

ID: 30887 • Letter: B

Question

BIOCHEMISTRY

In a cell, the Keq for a reaction is 500. Is this a spontaneous reaction in the cell?

Okay. At first I thought it had an obvious answer because I was thinking that since Keq >> 1, ?G would be large and negative. Then I looked at my book and saw that only ?G0 is related to Keq through the equation ?G0 = -RT ln Keq. Since this question is asking about if the reaction is spontaneous inside the cell (which does not have standard conditions), I have to look at ?G instead of ?G0. So, I know that ?G= ?G0+ RT ln Q, but I can't figure out how to solve this problem. Am I overanalyzing this or is there some reasoning behind how to solve this? Can someone please help me?

Explanation / Answer

product formation is favoured in this as the Keq is more than 1. Negative values of ?G