Hydrophobic hydration of solutes with a mixed hydrophilic--hydrophobic characteristics is still poorly understood. This is because both experimental and theoretical methods find it difficult to see the ice-like water structure around the nonpolar solute groups, unlike hydrogen bonds with the hydrophilic groups. In order to unravel this problem, we have investigated DMSO hydration by means of infrared spectroscopy and theoretical...

In this work, we investigated the influence of stabilizing (N,N,N-trimethylglycine) and destabilizing (urea) osmolytes on the hydration spheres of biomacromolecules in folded forms (trpzip-1 peptide and hen egg white lysozyme─hewl) and unfolded protein models (glycine─GLY and N-methylglycine─NMG) by means of infrared spectroscopy. GLY and NMG were clearly limited as minimal models for unfolded proteins and should be treated with...

Water properties may significantly affect protein stability. Osmolytes are compounds that intrinsically affect water in many different ways and thus can influence proteins with this type of indirect mechanism. In this study, we characterize water properties in ternary solutions: model–water–osmolyte, with two model molecules: N-methylacetamide (NMA) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and two osmolytes: glycine betaine (TMG)and urea....