Matrix porin, the ompF gene product of E. coli, has been the object of a electron crystallographic study of its pore geometry in an attempt to understand its function as a membrane molecular sieve. Three polymorphic forms have been found for two-dimensional crystals reconstituted in phospholipid, two hexagonal forms with different lipid content and an orthorhombic form coexisting with and similar to the hexagonal form found after lipid loss. In projection these have been shown to retain the same three-fold pore triplet geometry and analyses of three-dimensional data reveal that the small hexagonal and orthorhombic polymorphs have similar structure as well as unit cell spacings.