Solvent can generally influence the behavior of macromolecules; an example of this being hydrophobic behavior. Statistical mechanical methods have been used to investigate the origin of thermodynamic properties, such as the Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, and entropy, in relation to hydrophobic interactions. Rigorous statistical mechanical studies of fluid solutions have thus far been made on small molecule systems only. If the water molecules are regarded as simple spherical objects, there is a rigorous statistical mechanical procedure and a promising approximation scheme that can handle objects as geometrically complicated as a globular protein. The procedure is necessarily complicated and involves some heavy programming. These calculations, when completed, will aid in the calculation of thermodynamic properties of proteins in solution.
