Membranes’ twisted secret

Like many scientists, Annela Seddon requires special conditions to carry out her research. Down in the world of atoms and bonds that she explores the vibrations from so much as a whisper can wreak havoc like a hurricane. That’s why her workplace, the Bristol Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information, is probably the quietest building in the world. Recently, Annela has been making nanoscale discoveries about very small things inside our bodies… ‘People were used to thinking of lipid bilayers as being essentially flat – but that’s definitely not always the case.’