The cluster of receptors and associated proteins at the 'front end' of the E. coli chemotaxis pathway is a paradigm for membrane complexes in cells. Like focal adhesions and synapses, it acts as a solid-state computational device that amplifies, integrates, and parses chemical signals from the environment and relays the output to the rest of the cell. Ten years ago we proposed a structure for this receptor cluster and suggested how it might provide a basis for the very high sensitivity of cells to certain attractants. In this talk I will revisit the lattice architecture in the light of recent findings and present a radically different mechanism for its amplification. The new model is more firmly based on known molecular events and gives a better understanding of how the cell responds to mixed signals.