The state of water in the hydration shell of DNA was studied by infrared spectroscopy. The stretching bands of isotopically dilute HDO adsorbed on DNA have nearly the same band profiles as those of HDO in liquid water. This indicates a distribution of hydrogen-bond strengths similar to that in liquid water. At low temperatures, the spectra show that an inner layer of about 10 water molecules per nucleotide is incapable of crystallization, even when the surrounding water crystallizes into ice I. The biopolymer hydration shells are not "ice-like" in the sense of crystalline ordering into an ice-like structure.

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