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Chemical physics

How to keep dry in water

Nature volume 423, pages 25–26 (2003)Cite this article

What does water look like close to biological surfaces? The question has provoked heated debate for decades. Experiments suggest that this 'vicinal' water may be markedly different from the bulk liquid.

Water is notorious for behaving strangely, but it is possible that we don't yet know the half of it. Amid the crush of biological macromolecules and membranes in a cell, the water of the cytoplasm rarely achieves thicknesses of more than a few molecular layers. Might this confinement between macromolecular surfaces induce behaviour very different from that of the bulk liquid? A flurry of recent papers1,2,3, in Langmuir and Physical Review Letters, lends support to the idea — but there is, as yet, no consensus in sight4.

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References

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  1. consultant editor for Nature,

    Philip Ball

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  1. Philip Ball
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Ball, P. How to keep dry in water. Nature 423, 25–26 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/423025a

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/423025a

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