Within the body of any multicellular organism, including humans, there is a bustling array of cellular interactions happening at any given point of time. While there are many ways by which cells communicate with each other and other entities in the body, the underlying mechanisms of cellular communication remain fairly unique across species, organs and cells. One such mechanism utilizes the unique interaction between complex carbohydrates and cellular proteins as the “recognition software” for cells interacting with pathogens, toxins, and other cells. As a result, carbohydrate moieties embedded on cell surfaces serve as a first line of contact for cellular communication, and can affect a wide variety of cellular processes. Thus, gold nanoparticles decorated with such carbohydrate molecules are naturally a good candidate for use in therapeutic applications like those involving cellular responses to inflammations, bacterial infections, and cancer. The study of such glycan enriched nanoparticles is termed glyconanotechnology, and it has a broad range of applications across basic and translation research. However, the therapeutic application of glyconanotechnology has been facing many hurdles. Scientists from IISER Pune have now tried to further bridge the gap between basic research and therapeutic applications of glyconanotechnology, by systematically studying the toxicity and bio-distribution of fluorescently tagged glyconanoparticles of three different shapes within adult zebrafishes. These nanoparticles were synthesized by linking sugars like polyethylene glycol and mannose onto gold nanoparticles, and were made in three shapes namely, spheres, rods, and stars. The scientists at IISER Pune analyzed the toxicity and biological distribution of the glyconanoparticles within adult zebrafishes, and found that rod-shaped glyconanoparticles exhibited the fastest uptake within zebrafish cells. On the other hand, star-shaped glyconanoparticles showed the longest retention onto zebrafish cells, making it an ideal candidate for use in therapeutic applications involving a slow and sustained drug delivery. Such a study of glyconanoparticles efficacy in a simple animal like zebrafish could serve as a precursor to testing glyconanoparticles based therapeutic applications in higher order animals like mice.