The very presence of the water then helps the protein maintain its folded shape. At least, that's the theory that is trotted out in most biochemistry textbooks. But once you start to look more closely, it's not so simple. In 1945 Henry Frank and M. W. Evans suggested why nonetheless a hydrophobic force does seem to exist to hold cells together. It's all down to the strange nature of water itself, they said.
Water molecules stick to each other through relatively weak bonds called hydrogen bonds.
A glass of water is, in theory, one gigantic, disorderly network of hydrogen-bonded molecules, in which bonds are constantly being made and broken. This network structure makes water the weirdest liquid on Earth. When a molecule like a hydrocarbon comes blundering into the network, it threatens to disrupt the hydrogen bonds in its vicinity. What Frank and Evans suggested was that, in retaliation, all the water molecules around the intruder 'turn their backs' and 'join hands' even more determinedly, forming a kind of cage around it. In other words, the water around the dissolved molecule becomes more like an orderly crystal than a liquid.