Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute scientist John Chaput and his research team have made the first synthetic self-assembled nanostructures, composed entirely of glycerol nucleic acid (GNA), a synthetic analog of DNA.

With GNA, the five carbon sugar commonly found in DNA (deoxyribose) is substituted by glycerol, which contains just three carbon atoms.

Unlike DNA and proteins, which have evolved to exist only as right-handed, the GNA structures are “enantiomeric” molecules (both left and right-handed). The ability to make mirror image structures opens up new possibilities for making nanostructures.