So as it stands, I’m still trying to deal with the backlog of work from September, but I’m almost there, not much left to catch up on now. Anyway, this post is about the cell membrane and the history of its discovery.
1925 – Gorter and Grendel measured the amount of phospholipid extracted from red blood cells and determined that there was just enough to form a bilayer around the cell.
1935 – Danielli and Davson suggest that globular proteins are part of the membrane and proposed to sandwich model.
Late 1950s – Electron microscopy had advanced and J.D. Robertson suggested that all membranes in various cells have basically the same composition, leading to the unit membrane model.
1972 – J. S. Singer and G. L. Nicolson suggested a new structure for the cell membrane, the “Fluid Mosaic Model”. They proposed in part that the membrane is a phospholipid bilayer in which protein molecules are either partially or wholly embedded. This structure is still widely accepted at this time.
mybiochem 