Biological membranes

OCT 01, 1980

Living cells contain the ultimate in microelectronics: lipid bilayers carrying complex enzyme systems to perform sophisticated electronic and chemical functions

DOI: 10.1063/1.2913788

Britton Chance

Paul Mueller

Don De Vault

L. Powers

For solid‐state physicists and engineers the “ultimate in miniaturization” would be to produce devices with structures that are about 8 or 10 nm across—about a tenth of the smallest scale that can currently be produced. (See PHYSICS TODAY, November 1979, page 25.) Biological systems, however, have, in a sense, solved the problems associated with such small microstructures. The fundamental unit of many cell functions, the lipid bilayer membrane (figure 1), is 4 nm thick; in regions where the membrane carries proteins it may be as much as 10 nm thick. Other elements of the cell, such as the microtubules that provide its structural framework, have similar dimensions.

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More about the Authors

Britton Chance. University of Pennsylvania.

Paul Mueller. Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute.

Don De Vault. University of Illinois, Urbana.

L. Powers. Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey and University of Pennsylvania.