Life's matrix: water in the cell.

Water is a profoundly unusual liquid, and its peculiarities may make it uniquely suited to act as life's matrix. Even if this were not so, however, we should expect the effects of nanometre-scale confinement and inhomogeneities owing to surface effects to alter the liquid's properties in the cell relative to those in the bulk. Whether water's unusually high degree of local structure makes such influences even more marked than for 'normal' liquids remains an open question, with potentially important consequences for biomolecular interactions.