THE complexity of appearances in nature has forced humans to think about the principles of order and organization. Werner Heisenberg, for instance, contemplated the 'order of reality', and especially its prebiotic origin: "In the beginning was symmetry; that is certainly more correct than the Democritean thesis, in the beginning was the particle". Modern science looks for symmetries and symmetry breaking everywhere. So why do we find such high symmetries in simple and complex molecular systems, and even in viruses? Beissel and co-workers have reported on a principle of symmetry-driven self-assembly deduced from natural products -- a principle that they have used to design the formation of highly .symmetrical metal clusters.
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