The interactions of biosurfactants with lipid membranes

肥皂和洗涤剂用于洗衣店和厨房、油田和分子生物学实验室（仅举几个例子），以分散油腻的、否则不溶于水的材料。它们也被用于在消毒和杀精产品中破坏生物细胞。事实证明，自然界产生了各种各样的类似化合物，称为生物表面活性剂，用于类似和其他更具体的目的。例如植物中的皂苷（sapo是肥皂的拉丁语），细菌产生的抗微生物脂肽，以及在活细胞中具有多种功能的溶血脂和糖脂。

Soaps and detergents are used in laundries and kitchens, oil fields, and laboratories for molecular biology (to name but a few examples) to disperse greasy, otherwise insoluble materials in water. They are also used to destroy biological cells in sterilizing and spermicidal products. It turns out that nature produces a wide variety of similar compounds, termed biosurfactants, for similar and other, more specific purposes. Examples are saponins (sapo is latin for soap) in plants, antimicrobial lipopeptides produced by bacteria, and lyso- and glycolipids that have multiple functions in the living cell.