Fire Fly

Born in West Hollywood, Mike Levine says he grew up in a tiny house in the "boring suburbs" with a family he affectionately describes as dysfunctional. It was there, however, he's pretty sure he became interested in science. "My only escape was the backyard," says the professor and codirector of the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Integrative Genomics. "I'd run back there and tear open bugs and look at their guts under the microscope. I don't know if it was biological curiosity or just getting away from my mother. But my fondest memories as a kid are of playing in that backyard ... withdrawing into my own world, with my little microscope, looking at the guts of different bugs that I killed and maimed."