---
title: "This MIT Scientist Is Building Batteries Using Modified Viruses"
description: "Over the last decade, MIT bionengineering professor Angela Belcher has been conscripting millions of zombie viruses to build battery parts."
date: "2020-02-28"
modified: "2020-02-28"
authors:
  - name: "Victor Tangermann"
    job_title: "Senior Editor"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-scientist-building-batteries-viruses"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Medical"
  - "Pathogens"
  - "Viruses"
tags:
  - "batteries"
  - "the digest"
  - "virus"
---

# This MIT Scientist Is Building Batteries Using Modified Viruses

![Over the last decade, MIT bionengineering professor Angela Belcher has been conscripting millions of zombie viruses to build battery parts.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/mit-scientist-building-batteries-viruses.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Adenosine/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Virus Builders

Over the past decade, MIT bioengineering professor Angela Belcher has been working on a battery-building technology that works by conscripting millions of zombie viruses to repeat a simple task, [*Wired* reports](<https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-generation-of-batteries-could-be-built-by-viruses/>).

Belcher first manipulates genetically engineered bacteriophages to infect a bacterium, thereby creating millions of copies of themselves — and coercing them into creating a usable material in the process, such as a thin cobalt oxide nanowire that could later be used inside a battery electrode, according to *Wired*.

## Going Green

Experts told *Wired* that the technique could eventually be used to extend a battery's charge and discharge rate by forcing the millions of viruses to create a highly ordered electrode structure, with shortcuts for ions moving through electrodes.

"Something my lab is completely focused on now is trying to get the cleanest technology," Belcher told the magazine.

## Scaling Up

It will likely be a while until we see the technology make it to market. Scaling up the tech to a point where it can compete with conventional batteries is proving extremely difficult.

"In a battery production facility they use tons of material, so getting to that level with biological molecules is not very easy," Konstantinos Gerasopoulos, a senior research scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, told *Wired*.

Currently, Belcher is working on an entirely different application: creating tumor-hunting nanoparticles that are designed to treat cancer patients.

**READ MORE:** [The Next Generation of Batteries Could Be Built by Viruses](<https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-generation-of-batteries-could-be-built-by-viruses/>) \[*Wired*\]

**More on batteries:** *[New Battery Tech Could Double Electric Car Driving Range](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-battery-tech-double-electric-car-driving-range>)*

## Author
I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/vtanger.bsky.social>)