This book contains the Invited Lectures delivered at the meeting
"structural and Kinetic Approach to Plasma Membrane Functions" held in
Grignon/France on September 6-9, 1976. The meeting was intended as a
discussion forum for physicists, physico-chemists, biochemists, bio-
logists, and medical scientists, in an attempt to find as much "con-
tact-surface" as possible. The Invited Lectures cover a broad spectrum
of membrane preoccupations. The complexity of the topics, the variety of
the techniques used, and above all the wide scope of the research work
reported constitute an up-to-date presentation of the state-of- the-art
in a number of important areas of membranology. Our thanks are due to
all those who, with their contributions, helped make this book. In the
first place we wish to thank the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur F6rderung
der Wissenschaften e.V. and the Centre National de la Re- cherche
Scientifique who, by their generous support made this meeting possible.
Special thanks are due to Drs. B. Boman (Grignon/France), and Alice
Reimann (Mulheim) for their help in the final preparation of the con-
ference manuscript. Last but not least our thanks go to Springer-Verlag
for their friendly cooperation in producing this book under excellent
conditions.