Biological membranes such as the cell membrane play an essential and ubiquitous role in cellular communication, energy storage, structural support, and protecting the contents of living cells. Biological membranes are dynamic structures with remarkable properties: they have moving parts, they act as electrical circuits with long-range memory, they contain protein macromolecules (ion channels) that selectively open and close to admit ions, thereby regulating the electrical activities of cells, and they spontaneously form pores (electroporation) which is crucial for the operation of antimicrobial drugs.

This book focuses on building and mathematically modeling artificial membranes that mimic biological membranes. Recent advances in bioengineering and biochemistry allow us to build artificial membranes precisely to mimic the remarkable properties of biological membranes and also to build synthetic biological devices out of these membranes. Also advances in computational molecular biology allow us to construct largescale computer simulation models at the atomic-spatial scale to gain deep insight into the dynamic properties and structure-function relationship of such artificial membranes and devices. This dual approach of synthesis (building membranes and novel devices) and analysis (mathematical modeling) is vital for the future development of sensing devices, drug delivery mechanisms, and synthetic biological devices.

Summary. This book provides a comprehensive description of artificial membranes aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers in electrical engineering, biological and chemical engineering, biophysics, and applied mathematics. Construction of artificial membranes and devices is intimately linked with careful mathematical modeling so as to predict the performance and improve the design. As a result this book is organized into three interrelated parts:

Part I gives an overview of the book along with an elementary primer on biochemistry for engineers and applied mathematicians.

Part II deals precisely with engineering and building artificial membranes, building novel synthetic biological devices out of these artificial membranes, and evaluating how such devices perform in experimental and clinical studies. The devices studied include a super-resolution biosensor (which can be viewed as a fully operational nanomachine), an electroporation platform (for studying how membranes spontaneously form waterfilled pores), and an electrophysiological platform (for noninvasive measurements of cells).