The role of gluons in the structure of the nucleon and light nuclei is investigated using lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations. The first moment of the unpolarized gluon distribution is studied in nuclei up to atomic number A=3 at quark masses corresponding to pion masses of mπ∼450 and 806 MeV. Nuclear modification of this quantity defines a gluonic analogue of the EMC effect and is constrained to be less than ∼10% in these nuclei. This is consistent with expectations from phenomenological quark distributions and the momentum sum rule. In the deuteron, the combination of gluon distributions corresponding to the b1 structure function is found to have a small first moment compared with the corresponding momentum fraction. The first moment of the gluon transversity structure function is also investigated in the spin-1 deuteron, where a nonzero signal is observed at mπ∼806 MeV. This is the first indication of gluon contributions to nuclear structure that can not be associated with an individual nucleon
