Janner A
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Nijmegen, Toernooiveld, 6525 ED Nijmegen The Netherlands.
Acta Crystallogr A. 2004 Mar;60(Pt 2):198-200. doi: 10.1107/S0108767304003101. Epub 2004 Feb 17.
Most of the sharp peaks, recently reported by Constant & Shlichta [Acta Cryst. (2003), A59, 281-282], in the frequency distribution of known tetrahedral and hexagonal-rhombohedral inorganic compounds apparently correspond to integral lattices. These are characterized by an integral metric tensor of their basis vectors (up to a unit-length factor). Integral lattices also occur in molecular forms of axial-symmetric biomacromolecules, as illustrated by a RNA quadruplex. A general tendency in nature to reduce the number of structural free parameters is conjectured.