Biomolecular Materials Group

The Biomolecular Materials Group, headed by Professor Belcher, uses advanced bioengineering techniques to explore the interface between inorganic and organic materials for applications to energy, medicine, electronics, nanomechanics, and the environment.

About 500 million years ago organisms started growing hard materials like calcium carbonate and silica, bone and glass. For billions of years before the Cambrian geological period, organisms in the ocean were just soft bodied. Then, over the course of about 50 million years, there was an explosion of hard bodied creatures due to increased ions in the ocean. These organisms evolved to make exquisite nanostructures like shells and glassy diatoms. Organisms were limited in the types of elements they could use to build hard materials. Seashells were a source of inspiration to Professor Angela Belcher in her decision of what to pursue in her career and leading to her ground-breaking research with viruses and nanotechnology.

In the Biomolecular Materials Group, we evolve simple organisms using directed evolution to work with the elements in the rest of the periodic table. We encourage these organisms to grow and assemble technologically important materials and devices for energy, the environment, and medicine. These hybrid organic-inorganic electronic and magnetic materials have been used in applications as varied as solar cells, batteries, medical diagnostics and basic single molecule interactions related to disease. In doing so, we have capitalized on many of the wonderful properties of biology–using only non-toxic materials, employing self-repair mechanisms, self-assembling precisely and over longer ranges, and adapting and evolving to become better over time.