In order to study the properties and structure of human apolipoprotein A-I (apo-A-I) at the air-water interface, we formed monolayers of apo-A-I by either spreading or spontaneous adsorption from the subphase. The rate of monolayer formation, force-area (II-A) curves, and surface potentials were analyzed quantitatively. We constructed force-area curves by keeping constant either (a) the total area or (b) the total number of molecules. The results obtained by method a were reproducible and superimposable with those obtained from adsorbed monolayers. In turn, the results obtained by method b indicated aging effects by both pressure and potential measurements, suggesting irreversible denaturation of apo-A-I at areas larger than 50 A2/amino acid. At pressures lower than 0.5 dyn/cm, apo-A-I monolayers followed the two-dimensional ideal gas law; the molecular weight of the apoprotein calculated from the intercept on the ordinate of the IL4 vs. plot had an average value of 25 000. At higher pressures, the monolayer deviated from ideality, and the Recent physical and chemical studies on both high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and low-density lipoproteins (LDL) have suggested that apoproteins, cholesterol, and phospholipids form a monolayer at the outer surface of these lipoproteins (Morrisett et al., 1975). The enzymatic proteolysis of the intact lipoproteins (Aggerbeck et Camejo, 1969;Pattnaik et al., 1976) results in aggregation, indicating that the apoproteins play an important role in maintaining the lipoprotein structure. Such stabilization should be intimately related to the surface properties of the apoproteins. In order to explore the behavior of apolipoproteins at amphiphilic interfaces and their relation to the surface organization of human serum HDL3, we turned our attention to apolipoprotein A-I (apo-A-I), which is the major protein component of plasma HDL.