摘要Cell membranes are complicated multicomponent structures,related to many basic cellular processes,such as substance transporting,energy conversion,signal transduction,mechanosensing,cell adhesion and so on.However,cell membranes have long been difficult to study at a single-molecule level due to their complex and dynamic properties.During the last decades,biophysical imaging techniques,such as atomic force microscopy and super-resolution fluorescent microscopy,have been developed to study biological structures with unprecedented resolution,enabling researchers to analyze the composition and distribution of membrane proteins and monitor their specific functions at single cell/molecule level.In this review,we highlight the structure and functions of cell membranes based on up-to-date biophysical techniques.Additionally,we describe the recent advances in force-based detecting techno-logy,which allow insight into dynamic events and quantitativelymonitoring kinetic parameters for trans-membrane transporting in living cells.