What Is the Change in Free Energy of a System

question 23

Multiple Choice

What is the change in free energy of a system at chemical equilibrium?

• A)slightly increasing
• B)greatly increasing
• C)slightly decreasing
• D)greatly decreasing
• E)no net change

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Definitions:

Genetic Drift

Genetic drift is evolution arising from random changes in the genetic composition of a population from one generation to the next.

Phylogenetic Tree

A diagram that depicts the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical and/or genetic characteristics.

Distance-Matrix Method

A distance-matrix method is a procedure for constructing phylogenetic trees by clustering taxa based on the proximity (or distance) between their DNA or protein sequences. These methods place closely related sequences under the same internal branch, and they estimate branch lengths from the observed distances between sequences.

Maximum Parsimony

Maximum parsimony is a statistical method for reconstructing phylogenies that identifies the tree topology that minimizes the total amount of change, or the number of steps, required to fit the data to the tree.