The depiction of organic structures

The representation of crystal structures as nets is often of help in demonstrating structural relationships that are not lucidly portrayed by the use of polyhedra or sphere packing. Research in this 

The classical aspects of crystallography are centred upon inorganic or metallic crystals. This 

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The ball and stick or space-filling approach to the depiction of organic structures is satisfactory when small molecules are concerned, but it becomes too cumbersome for the representation of large molecules. In the case of complex naturally occurring molecules, this level of detail may even obscure the way in which the molecule functions biologically. The problem of structural characterisation in such large molecules will be discussed with respect to proteins, in the following section. 

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