Symmetry and space groups

Space group operators can be found here: http://www.embl-hamburg.de/~pinotsis/spacegroup.html

The crystallographic toolbox is at [1]. Its predecessor, SgInfo, is here.


Facts about space groups

There are 230 space groups, 65 of which accessible to proteins.

Empirically, P212121 is the space group which occurs most often (23%) in the PDB; second place is P1 with 14.4% ( [2]).

Reflection conditions

These are explained and listed in Section 2.2.13 of International Tables of Crystallography, Volume A . If this is not on your desk, check out the IUCr wiki:

Reflection_conditions which explains the topic, and links to lists of the general absences in article Integral_reflection_conditions, and the absences along the screw axes in Serial_reflection_conditions