Our lab utilizes Chemical Biology tools to probe the structure and function of functional nucleic acids. In this direction, we synthesize and study the interactions of novel small molecule ligands with various DNA/RNA G-quadruplex and i-Motif structures. We also develop new chemical strategies to access various nucleobase-damaged DNAs to study the structure and function of TLS polymerases, which bypass those damages. We explore the discovery of aptamers and DNA enzymes using in vitro selection. The effect of chemical modifications on therapeutic nucleic acids such as antisense oligonucleotides, siRNAs (RNAi), and sgRNAs (CRISPR) are also probed. In all the projects, we utilize various tools, from synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, and molecular modeling.