Membrane Biophysics

Lipid bilayers, such as that shown here surrounded by water molecules, form the physical barriers around cells and organelles.  This image is attributable to Milan Hodoscek and the molecular dynamics program, CHARMM.
Lipid bilayers, such as that shown here surrounded by water molecules, form the physical barriers around cells and organelles. This image is attributable to Milan Hodoscek and the molecular dynamics program, CHARMM.

Membranes control the selective, active, and passive transport of molecular cargo between cells and orgnanelles. Membrane biophysics provides methodologies to to understand and control these processes. By building biomimetic models of the cell membrane in-vitro and in-silico, physicists try to construct a first-principles understanding of compartmentalization of biomolecular components.