Gene therapy is a promising new therapeutical modality.  While the complex of dendrimer with DNA is considered as a useful gene delivery systems, the supramolecular structure formation of the dendriplexes is still not well understood.  We have been studying the self-assembled structures of DNA complexed with PAMAM dendrimers with a broad range of generation using SAXS and SANS. We are also interested in resolving the similarity between the beads-on-string structure of the dendriplex and that of chromatin to identify the controlling factor of chomatin structure formation. 

We have been studying the crystallization behavior of chain molecules confined in a variety of microdomain and vesicle geometries using block copolymers as nanoscale templates.  The effect of spatial confinement on the nucleation mechanism and crystal orientation is of particular interests.  We have also been exploring the unconventional nanostructures formed by block copolymers with current emphasis on the ordered bicontinuous double diamond (OBDD) structure formed by a stereoregular diblock copolymer.  Moreover, we have also discovered an anomalous thermodynamic state of the weakly-interacting diblock copolymer, which is under intensive study using scatteringtechniques.