Chapter 2Mode of Interaction of Articial Pulmonary Surfactant with an Amphiphilic α-Helical Peptide at the Air/Water Interface

Langmuir monolayers at the air/water interface induce experimentally simple, convenient, and useful model systems for biophysical studies in cell biology and physiology. In fact, Langmuir monolayerbehavior of amixture of proteins and phospholipids is converted to pulmonary surfactant (PS) behavior in vivo in order to treat respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), etc., in the clinical eld. In recent times, some researchers have claried the correlations from in vitro to in vivo behavior (Goerke 1998, Lipp et al. 1997).