During postdoctoral studies in Massachusetts I became interested in the application of vibrational spectroscopy for structural studies on DNA and proteins. In the early 80's along with my postdoctoral mentor and colleagues at MIT, I initiated laser Raman studies on single crystals of DNA. These were the first studies to demonstrate that crystal packing forces could significantly impact the structure of B-form DNA. At that time I also showed that RNA-DNA hybrid structures were not always dominated by the RNA component. During the mid 80's I had the opportunity to visit with professor Masamichi Tsuboi at the University of Tokyo. This was the beginning of a long friendship and a fruitful collaboration that led to the development of polarized Raman spectroscopy as a tool for structural studies on DNA and viruses. In the late 80's I moved to Kansas City and continued to exploit laser Raman spectroscopy to investigate DNA-protein interactions in gene regulatory complexes and viruses.