Scientists, led by a team at the University of Colorado Boulder, have created the first-ever synthetic DNA-like polymer. "Using dynamic covalent chemistry, they were able to not only construct a helical covalent polymer that rivals the sophistication of those found in nature but confirm its existence with absolute certainty using single crystal X-ray diffraction (a powerful, non-destructive way to characterize single crystals using light)," states Phys, the innovation website.

MANY RESULTING IMPLICATIONS ARE EXPECTED IN THE FUTURE

This new discovery was announced in Nature Chemistry and commented on by Wei Zhang, an author on the study and a professor of chemistry at CU Boulder. It opens the world up to new research that could have implications for everything from artificial enzyme creation, which has already been successfully used in various medical applications, to the creation of biomimetic materials (materials that mimic processes found in nature).

RESEARCHERS READY TO EXPLORE CATALYSIS AND SENSING APPLICATIONS

"After they dive a little deeper into the structure itself, the researchers plan to play with and explore the structure itself, seeing if they can make the crystals themselves bigger (right now they are fairly small), and if they can control the chirality, or spiral nature, of the polymer, which could have broad implications for catalysis (chemical reaction process utilizing catalysts), signal transduction (how signals are sent throughout the cell) and sensing applications," underlines the website.