Symmetry of biological macromolecules and their associations

AbstractThe structure of biological macromolecules and their associations obeys the symmetry theory principles. The biological macromolecules are composed of asymmetric small molecules and are found to be chiral. This may be explained by specificity of biochemical reactions. The symmetry groups of biomolecules and their associations have been considered at different hierarchical levels of organization of biostructures—polypeptides, globular proteins, quaternary structure of proteins, viruses, nucleic acids, tubular crystals and ordinary three-dimensional crystals. The data are given on noncrystallographic point symmetry of packing of globular proteins in the crystal lattice, and on the statistics of protein crystal distribution over space groups