Net ionization and net capture cross-section calculations are presented for proton collisions from methane molecules and the DNA/RNA nucleobases adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil.We use the recently introduced independent-atom-model pixel counting method to calculate these cross sections in the 10 keV to 10 MeV impact energy range and compare them with results obtained from the simpler additivity rule, a previously used complete-neglect-of-differential-overlap method, and with experimental data and previous calculations where available. It is found that all theoretical results agree reasonably well at high energies, but deviate significantly in the low-to-intermediate energy range. In particular, the pixel counting method which takes the geometrical overlap of atomic cross sections into account is the only calculation that is able to describe the measurements for capture in proton-methane collisions down to 10 keV impact energy. For the nucleobases it also yields a significantly smaller cross section in this region than the other models. New measurements are urgently required to test this prediction.Collisions involving complex molecules pose a significant challenge to theory owing to their large number of degrees of freedom and their multi-center geometry. A convenient framework for a simplified discussion is offered by the independent atom model (IAM) according to which certain properties and quantities of a molecule are constitutive, i.e., can be obtained by adding up atomic contributions. When applied to collisions, the simplest version of the IAM consists in adding up the cross sections of the atomic constituents of a given molecule in order to obtain the molecular cross section. This procedure is usually referred to as the additivity rule (AR). It goes back to Bragg [1] and was first studied in a more systematic fashion in the 1950s for electron-impact ionization of medium-sized molecules [2]. The IAM-AR has since been applied to many electron-and ion-impact collision systems, typically with good success at high impact energies, while larger discrepancies with experimental data have been found in the low-to-intermediate energy region. This has been taken as an indication that molecular structure effects gain importance with decreasing collision energy [3].Accordingly, extensions and alternatives have been considered, such as ARs with weight factors (see, e.g., [4] and the review article [5] and references therein) and a completeneglect-of-differential-overlap (CNDO) approach (see, e.g., [3,6,7]. The latter starts from the assumption that a molecular net cross section can be expressed as a sum of partial cross sections for all initially occupied molecular orbitals (MOs) and then approximates those partial cross sections as linear combinations of atomic-orbital (AO) specific cross sections with weight factors that are obtained from a Mulliken population analysis [8]. In this way, the CNDO approach takes molecular structure information into account to some extent. However, CNDO cross sections do ...