 Thomas's recent work has focused on the in-depth understanding of chromatin proteins, such as high-mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) and histone H1, and their interactions with DNA.In 2007, her research team used NMR mapping to better define the negative regulation of the HMGB1-DNA interaction that was suspected to be largely controlled by the acidic tail of HMGB1.They found that regardless of the length of the acidic tail, it makes extensive contacts with the DNA-binding regions of the two tandem HMG-boxes in HMGB1.