Of all the macromolecular assemblies of life, the least understood is the biomembrane. This is especially true in regard to its atomic structure. Ideas on biomembranes, developed in the last 200 years, culminated in the fluid mosaic model of the membrane. In this essay, I provide a historical outline of how we arrived at our current understanding of biomembranes and the models we use to describe them. A selection of direct experimental findings on the nano-scale structure of biomembranes is taken up to discuss their physical nature, and special emphasis is put on the surprising insights that arise from atomic scale descriptions.

中文翻译：

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关于生物膜结构的论文。

在生命的所有大分子组装中，最不了解的是生物膜。就其原子结构而言尤其如此。在过去的200年中，有关生物膜的想法最终形成了膜的流体镶嵌模型。在本文中，我提供了一个历史概述，说明了我们如何对目前对生物膜的理解以及用于描述它们的模型。选取了有关生物膜纳米级结构的直接实验结果以讨论其物理性质，并特别强调了原子级描述所产生的令人惊讶的见解。