conformation determination method This technology relates to measurement of protein and nucleic acid conformational properties. Proteins undergo changes to their tertiary structure upon heating, binding to perturbagens, other proteins and substrates. Nucleic acids have characteristic secondary structures, which include the B-family of structures, A-form, Z-form, guanine quadruplexes, cytosine quadruplexes, triplexes, etc. Information about conformational properties of protein and nucleic acids can be obtained by circular dichroism spectroscopy, thermal shift, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), X-ray crystallography, etc. assay design method