Directionality of Chemical Reaction and Spontaneity of Biological Process in the Context of Entropy

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Author Info

Jawad Alzeer

Corresponding Author

Jawad Alzeer
Swiss Scientific Society for Developing Countries, Zurich, Switzerland

A B S T R A C T

Chemical and biochemical reactions are carried out either to generate energy or to produce useful macromolecules. Entropy is a well-applied concept in many fields, including physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. Various perspectives have been used to describe the concept, creating confusion and misconceptions. In chemical and biochemical reactions, entropy plays a significant role in the directionality and spontaneity of the reactions. Potential energy can be used to better understand the concept of entropy. Potential energy represents order, while entropy represents disorder; therefore, they are inversely proportional and intimately linked. Molecules with high potential usually have rich sets of functions and information, which is due to the enrichment of their constitutions, configurations, and conformations. In molecules with low potential, there are greater vibrational, rotational, and translational motions associated with decreased order in their constitution, configuration, and conformation. Distribution of electronic charge changes in macromolecules over time, increasing the rotation of side-chain residues and thus increasing entropy and affecting potential in terms of structure, function, and information. Entropy can thus be defined as a state of spontaneous change, bound to time and constantly increasing, which causes structural changes in the form of constitution, configuration, and conformation, and functional changes in the form of the ability to do work as well as informational changes in the form of the transmission of commands.

Article Info

Article Type

Review of the Literature

Publication history

Received: Thu 29, Sep 2022
Accepted: Mon 17, Oct 2022
Published: Mon 31, Oct 2022

Copyright

© 2023 Jawad Alzeer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.RGM.2022.02.06