Abstract
During the last decades biochemistry has seen exciting advances in many directions. One common factor, which became apparent in many areas of research, is the extraordinary importance of structure and organization for the chemical reactions taking place in cells. This factor was understood poorly, or not at all, in the era of classical biochemistry. Among the topics which have moved into the center of biological interest in recent years are the cell membranes. Two reasons are responsible: firstly, membranes turned out to be the site of many of the most vital functions of living cells; secondly, they offer a great challenge to the ingenuity of biochemists and physicochemists to analyze the interactions between proteins and proteins, proteins and phospholipids, and between other components within a tightly organized structure. As an illustration of the complexity of membranes and the progress achieved in their analysis, two models are given: that proposed about twelve years ago by Robertson [1], and the recent model of the inner mitochondrial membrane as proposed by Sjoestrand and Barajas [2], Fig. 1).
This work has been supported in part by the U.S. Public Health Service Grant No. NS-03 304, by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF-GB-31 122X, and by gifts from the New York Heart Association, Inc. and the Hoffmann-La Roche Foundation.
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Nachmansohn, D. (1974). Importance of Structure and Organization for the Chemical Reactions in Excitable Membranes. In: Genazzani, E., Herken, H. (eds) Central Nervous System. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65714-6_14
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