Fifty-year protein mystery breaks open as acid-driven water loss comes into view

Proteins systematically lose their protective hydration shell when their environment becomes more acidic. Until recently, this was just a theory. State-of-the-art imaging techniques have helped researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) directly observe this process for the first time at the level of the individual water molecule. This has answered a question in biochemistry that had remained unanswered for 50 years.