Membrane proteins represent one of the great frontiers of structural biology today.
These proteins are responsible for communication between the outside world and the chemical and biological factories that are housed inside the cell membranes. Ninety percent of today's neuroscience drug targets are membrane proteins. These proteins are responsible for transmitting hormonal signals into the cell and for transporting nutrients into the cell and products out of the cell. Modulating the efficiency of these proteins can be critical for the control of cell and tissue performance and for the control of disease states. As important as these proteins are to cellular processes, they have been extraordinarily difficult to characterize by standard technologies and techniques.