Includes bibliographical references and index.

Water -- Water structure -- Structure determination: diffraction studies -- Liquid water -- Ice polymorphs -- Small crystal hydrates -- Structural regularities between water molecules -- Water structure around biological molecules -- Thermodynamic and dynamic properties of water -- Density and isothermal compressibility of liquid water -- Dynamic properties -- Rotational correlation times and the lifetime of hydrogen bonds in water -- Aqueous solutions of simple hydrophobic solutes -- Proteins -- Hydration of amino acids in protein crystals -- Methods -- Results -- Water structure of crystallized proteins: high resolution studies -- Crystallographic methods -- Other methods -- Hydration of protein secondary structures: the role in protein folding -- Hydration of alpha-helices -- Hydration of 3₁₀ helices and reverse turns -- Hydration of b-sheets.

(cont) Nucleic acids -- Molecular dynamics simulations on the hydration, structure and motions of DNA oligomers -- MD simulation -- MD studies on prototype systems -- MD studies on DNA in vacuo -- MD studies on DNA with solvent -- Restrained MD and refinement -- MD studies of DNA variants and complexes -- Brownian dynamics simulations -- Structural water bridges in nucleic acids -- Hydration around phosphate groups -- 5'-phosphate-water-base bridges -- 3'-phosphate-water-sugar bridges -- 3'-phosphate-water-base bridges -- Other phosphate-wate-base bridges -- Other phosphate-water-sugar bridges -- Sugar-water-base bridges -- Base-water-base bridges -- Hydration sites and hydration bridges around DNA helices -- Hydration site approach -- Monte Carlo calculations -- Light scattering spectroscopy studies of the water molecules in DNA -- Raman and Brillouin spectroscopies -- Structure of DNA hydration shell studied by Raman spectroscopy -- Dynamics of DNA hydration shell studied by Brillouin spectroscopy.

(cont) Polysaccharides and lipids -- Polysaccharide interactions with water -- Analysis of the structural methods -- Water location in crystalline polysaccharides -- Water in the crystalline polymorphism of polysaccharides -- Difficulties and limits of water location in crystalline polysaccharides -- Role of structural water molecules in protein-saccharide complexes -- Periplasmic binding proteins: complexes with monosaccharides and disaccharides -- Enzymes -- Lectins -- Lipid hydration -- Lipids -- Sources of lipid hydration -- Temperature effects -- Ion and solute effects -- Modelling lipid-water interactions -- Consequences of lipid hydration -- Lipid aggregation in water -- Hydration force -- Relevance of lipid hydration -- Thermodynamics -- Hydration forces -- Theory -- Negative interfacial tensions and polar repulsion -- Quantitative expression of hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity -- Hydration orientation -- Consequences and examples of hydration forces -- Solvation forces in non-aqueous media.

(cont) How specific interactions overcome hydration forces -- Solvation thermodynamics of biopolymers -- Definitions -- Ingredients of (delta)Ga -- Some illustrative numerical examples -- Critique of the group additivity assumption for the solvation Gibbs energy -- Examples of biochemical processes affected by solvation -- Solvation and structural changes in the solvent.