1. NMR of Protein Folding & Dynamics

Protein dynamics can markedly influence the important aspects of protein functions, such as folding, molecular recognition, stability, and enzyme action. In order to elucidate the dynamic nature of proteins, the internal motions of Ketosteroid Isomerase, a homodimeric enzyme with 125 amino acid residues per subunit, have been and are being studied by heteronuclear multi-dimensional NMR, particularly focusing on the relationship between the internal motions and the folding mechanism of the enzyme.

2. Hyper-Polarized Noble ¹²⁹Xe Gas NMR

Hyper-polarized ¹²⁹Xe NMR is a newly developed technique, which can emerge as a very powerful method for the study of porous materals(zeolites, cokes etc) and biological systems(lung, proteins). We are currently performing extensive hyper-polarized ¹²⁹Xe NMR studies to investigate the pore characterization of various porous materials.

3. Development of New Porous Materials

Porous materials are very promising materials in many applications such as  hydrogen storage, heterogeneous catalysis, selective gas separation, and so on. Our research interests in this field currently focus on development and characterization of new porous materials, especially metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with the higher surface area.