Symmetry calculation for molecules and transition states.

The symmetry of molecules and transition states of elementary reactions is an essential property with important implications for computational chemistry. The automated identification of symmetry by computers is a very useful tool for many applications, but often relies on the availability of three-dimensional coordinates of the atoms in the molecule and hence becomes less useful when these coordinates are a priori unavailable. This article presents a new algorithm that identifies symmetry of molecules and transition states based on an augmented graph representation of the corresponding structures, in which both topology and the presence of stereocenters are accounted for.