The number and quality of known membrane protein structures has been steadily increasing over the last decade. By commissioning reviews for the Special Review Collection under the title “Structure Meets the Membrane,” the Editors aim to highlight a number of major advances in the determination of membrane protein structures.The Special Review Collection includes eleven contributions to be published in the next three issues (October through December): a review of glutamate receptor ion channels by Mark Mayer, a discussion of the role of electron crystallography in structural biology of membrane proteins by Tamir Gonen and colleagues, an overview of mechanosensitive channels by Douglas Rees and colleagues, a survey of computational methods to study membrane proteins by Mark S.P. Sansom and colleagues, a perspective on the role of lipids by Kai Simons and colleague, new insights into Na+,K+-ATPase by Chikashi Toypshima and colleagues, a discussion of structural genomics approaches to membrane protein structure by Wayne Hendrickson, a review of bacterial pentameric ligand-gated ion channels by Pierre-Jean Corringer and colleagues, a discussion of membrane protein dynamics gleaned through the use of EPR spectroscopy by Hassane Mchaourab, an exploration of issues surrounding design of membrane proteins presented by Jeffrey G. Saven, and an overview of proteins and protein domains that interact with a membrane by Mark Lemmon and colleagues.We thank the authors as well the reviewers who were involved in the process of shaping these contributions. We believe that the biological community will increasingly benefit from the ever-growing body of structural information on membrane proteins, and we hope that the discussions included in the Special Review Collection will contribute to this laudable goal.