ABSTRACT
Dierential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used early on for the determination of thermotropic phase transitions in lyotropic lipid phases. e interest in lipid behavior stemmed from the fact that the basic structure of the biological membrane is a bimolecular leaet of lipids, in which proteins are either incorporated in or peripherally bound to the surface of the lipid bilayers. Aer several models had been proposed for the structure of biological membranes, the Singer and Nicolson uid-mosaic model presented in 1972 was nally widely accepted as a structural model for a biological membrane (see Figure 6.1) (Singer and Nicolson 1972; Nicolson 2014). Today, this model is still used, but with modications taking into account inhomogeneous distributions of lipids and proteins in the plane of the membrane and the presence of dynamic lipid/protein clusters having dierent composition (Vaz and Almeida 1993; Vaz 1994; Vereb et al. 2003; Goni 2014; Nicolson 2014).
