Book excerpt: This book contains the lectures of the second course devoted to bioelectro chemistry, held within the framework of the International School of Biophysics. In this course another very large field of bioelectrochemistry, i. e. the field of Membrane Phenomena, was considered, which itself consists of several different, but yet related subfields. Here again, it can be easily stated that it is impossible to give a complete and detailed picture of all membrane phenomena of biological interest in a short course of about one and half week. Therefore the same philosophy, as the one of the first course, was followed, to select a series of lectures at postgraduate level, giving a synthesis of several membrane phenomena chosen among the most'important ones. These lectures should show the large variety of membrane-regulated events occurring in living bodies, and serve as sound interdisciplinary basis to start a special ized study of biological phenomena, for which the investigation using the dual approach, physico-chemical and biological, is unavoidable. Since, as already mentioned, it was impossible to exhaust, even roughly, is a short course like this, the presentation and introductory treatment of the extremely large variety of membrane phenomena, it can be expected that the third course will continue the subject of membrane phenomena deepening some ones presented in this course and introducing some new ones. vii CONTENTS Symbols and acronyms IX Opening address G. MILAZZO 1 Structure of biological membranes and of their models I J . A. HAYWARD et al.