ABSTRACT
Biomembranes are key elements of cells and organelles whose function is crucial to the understanding of energy transduction, regulation, and growth. In view of these diverse and intricate processes, it is not surprising that the biomembranes are very complex functionally. By contrast, the molecular organization of biomembranes, as revealed by physical chemical studies, is rather simple and elegant consisting of a lipid bilayer core, associated proteins, glycolipids, and other nonlipid materials. The bilayer is about 50 Å thick in a relative liquid state with proteins and nonlipid materials arranged on each side as well as transversely across the lipid bilayers. 1 Owing to this delicate structure and its dimensions, direct experimental investigation of the biomembrane is exceedingly difficult at the membrane level. Thus, to overcome constraints imposed by the complexity of biomembrane, a number of artificial membrane systems have been developed. 2 , 3 In this survey we shall be concerned with the experimental bilayer lipid membrane (BLM) of planar configuration. The review on BLM is in no sense complete; it is not possible to cite a great number of excellent papers in this expanding field of BLM research owing to space limitation. References may be consulted on the topics not covered here. 3 – 8 A bibliography of the literature on BLM has been published. 9
