Organic circuits have been in development for awhile, but it's still rare that the organics are producing the circuitry themselves. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara plan to break that silence with genetically engineered proteins that can make silicon dioxide or titanium dioxide structures like those used in the computer chips and solar cells that we hold dear. The trick, the university's Daniel Morse found, is to attach silica-forming DNA to plastic beads that are in turn soaked
