Ligand binding water, role

Despite the fact that nonpolar hydration forces dominate whenever hydrophobic interactions [46] are important, the general availability of accurate models for the nonpolar component of the hydration-free energy is lacking. The structure and properties of proteins in water is highly influenced by hydrophobic interactions [47-50]. Hydrophobic interactions also play a key role in the mechanism of ligand binding to proteins [30,51-53], Empirical surface area models [54] for the nonpolar component of the solvation free energy are widely used [28,37,55-62]. Surface area models are useful as a first... 

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