If the chain symmetry is maintained in the crystal lattice, the possible occurrence of different space groups is considerably restricted.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If the polymer chain assumes a helicoidal conformation in the crystalline state, and if it does not contain asymmetric carbon atoms, it can be expected that either helices of the same sense, or, in equal ratio, helices of opposite sense are represented in the lattice.
So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.
However, it required some years before the scientific community in general accepted that flexibility and disorder are very relevant molecular properties also in other systems.
One of the first groups we signed was the Fifth Dimension.
X-Ray crystallography is nowadays an accurate and rapid method of determining conformation in the crystal lattice, which conformation usually corresponds to the preferred conformation in solution.
In any finite region of space, matter can only arrange itself in a finite number of configurations, just as a deck of cards can be arranged in only finitely many different orders. If you shuffle the deck infinitely many times, the card orderings must necessarily repeat.
The structure of many cellular macromolecules has been revealed at the atomic level using x-ray crystallography.
The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an apparent periodicity of properties.
The existence of symmetry laws is in full accordance with our daily experience. The simplest of these symmetries, the isotropy and homogeneity of space, are concepts that date back to the early history of human thought.
Everywhere in the universe, the periodic table has the same basic structure. Even if an alien civilization's table weren't plotted out in the castle-with-turrets shape we humans favor, their spiral or pyramidal or whatever-shaped periodic table would naturally pause after 118 elements.