Water confined in solutions of biological relevance

In many relevant situations, water is not in its bulk form but instead attached to some substrates or filling some cavities. We shall call water in the latter environment confined water as opposed to bulk water. It is known that the confined water is essential for the stability and the function of biological macromolecules. In this paper, we provide a review of the experimental and computational advances over the past decades concerning the understanding of the structure and dynamics of water confined in aqueous solutions of biological relevance. Examples involving water in solution of organic solutes (cryoprotectants such as dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), sugars such as trehalose) are provided.