The purpose of this research is to investigate how nucleic acids function by studying their dynamic properties. Included are projects on the kinetics of assembly of DNA and histones into nucleosomes using the temperature-jump method with light scattering detection. Also, the kinetics of binding and unwinding of closed circular DNA under superhelical stress will be examined, as will the use of electric dichroism measurements on DNA fragments to determine molecular lengths from observation of the rotational relaxation time. Finally, temperature-jump and high resolution NMR measurements will be combined to investigate the effect of ribosomal proteins on the conformation and dynamic properties of ribosomal RNAs.