Javier Fernandez admits he's not a huge fan of chess. "I'm not very good either," he says.
Nevertheless, his queen, king, rook and knight are attracting a lot of attention.
The black and white chess pieces are made of plastic, but not the petroleum-based kind experts warn may be laden with hormone-scrambling chemicals. Rather, Fernandez and his colleagues molded the complex game pieces from a compostable material abundant in nature: Chitin.
It's the stuff of shrimp shells, insect armor and butterfly wings -- and now of a small collection of chess pieces, party cups and egg cartons in a Cambridge, Mass., lab.
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