We have engaged in a long term effort to build accurate bio-mimetic systems for complex structural biology studies. Recently, we have found that thiolalkylamidealcohol self-assembled monolayers on a gold surfaces are an easy to fabricate and versatile support for floating lipid bilayers. We have had success in building model floating Gram negative and simple phospholipid membranes. Now we wish to build significant complexity into these model membrane systems with an aim to examine the inclusion of unsaturated lipids, mixed lipids and sterols in the models. These membranes will mimic the lipid mixtures found in higher plant membranes. The desired complexity in the model systems will be produced by iteratively increasing the components of the bilayers examined during the experimental time.