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" In the beginning, as were we all, the abalone was naked. Over the years, however, the level of calcium in the world&amp;#039;s oceans rose, poisoning the naked abalone. As the millennia passed, the abalone evolved a solution for itself: It developed proteins specifically designed to carry the calcium outside its body, locking it into the shell that now decorates so many mantelpieces, boat decks, and yacht-club bars all over the world, as well as Angela Belcher&amp;#039;s desk.  On Belcher&amp;#039;s desk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amid the spreadsheets and reports and all the academic flotsam that accumulates at MIT the way tailbacks do at USC, there is one fine-looking abalone shell. About as big as half a honeydew, it&amp;#039;s cracked open to reveal the strange, softly metallic swirl of color common to the creature. The colors change depending on the angle of the lights striking the shell, some becoming deeper and others more muted. It looks like a place where stars are born. It looks like that amorphous place in the mind where ideas come from.  It was the abalone&amp;#039;s ability to create its own protection that first inspired in Belcher the notion that natural defenses could be reverse engineered so as to create inorganic materials using organic processes--a field called biomimicry in which Belcher has become a recognized pioneer. She has been able to genetically engineer common and harmless viruses so that they act like tiny factories, producing semiconducting nanoparticles that then produce biosensors, liquid-crystal structures for computer screens and memory chips. Already Belcher&amp;#039;s busy microbes have produced components for the tiniest transistors. They have constructed wires and metal films. And if this sounds all too much like something that ought to be tromping through your multiplex next summer seeking to devour Tom Cruise, rest easy. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t read any Michael Crichton,&amp;quot; laughs Belcher. Belcher is a thirty-eight-year-old Texan, and it was while she was at the University of California at Santa Barbara that the abalone fired her imagination. Through manipulation of the abalone&amp;#039;s calcium-carrying proteins, Belcher was able to speed up the production of the abalone shell material. While this alone may have benefited souvenir shops in and around Monterey Bay, Belcher has moved on to working with viruses. By engineering their DNA, Belcher has been able to adapt viruses to interact with new materials such as magnetic or semiconductor materials vital to the production of computer components. Like the abalone working with calcium, albeit millions of years faster, the viruses quickly developed within themselves mechanisms by which the substances moved through them, creating new materials in solid form that Belcher could collect by hand. The applications for this technology are mind-boggling. In addition, Belcher spends a great deal of time demystifying her work in public. She is constantly asked to explain why the concept of genetically engineered viruses producing computer components ought not bring out the inner Aldous Huxley in a science-impaired public. Belcher&amp;#039;s work already won her a MacArthur Foundation &amp;quot;genius&amp;quot; grant last year, and it has managed (temporarily, at least) to lock her into a single field of study, albeit one that encompasses her earlier study of biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and electrical engineering. She is also expecting her first child later this winter. However, none of this has slowed down the intellectual ambition that has evolved in her as fast as the viruses that do the work in her lab. Angela Belcher committed herself long ago to master a new field of study every four years. &amp;quot;I would still love to learn to play the cello,&amp;quot; she says. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a75/esq1205bbhanbelch-232-2/>