“…[3,4,5] In addition to this remarkable water binding behaviour and the resulting hygroscopicity, [2] it was assumed that the properties of the first hydration shell around ectoine are responsible for further effects, ranging from the stabilization of proteins [6,7,8,9,10,1] to the protection of DNA from ultraviolet [11] and ionizing radiation damage. [12,13] In contrast to its stabilizing effects, previous studies also reported a destabilizing impact of ectoine on charged macromolecules with regard to direct and local interactions [14,15,16,17,18,19,11] in addition to radical scavenging properties. [12,20,11] Besides the aforementioned effects in bulk solution, recent single-crystal and powder X-ray, as well as single crystal neutron diffraction measurements also revealed conformational changes of crystalline ectoine upon dehydration.…”