You are taken at face value an ICR article that's trying to decieve you.
For where the evolution part is relevant
Belcher (and Chiang) uses a method sometimes called "directed evolution," which allows her to quickly modify viruses to work with a range of materials.
In this case, directed evolution begins with a small vial that Chiang pulls from a refrigerator. Inside is a clear fluid that contains a billion viruses; they are nearly identical, but each has a subtle genetic variation introduced by the researchers. The variations are, in part, fortuitous: the researchers add a randomly generated sequence of DNA to each virus. But the added DNA, which codes for a short strand of amino acids called a peptide, is inserted into the gene for a select protein.
Since there are so many variations among the viruses in the vial, some of them should randomly have peptides that bind to a useful inorganic material. The researchers simply pour the contents of the vial onto a target material, such as a small square of gold, and give the viruses a chance to bind. Then they wash the material. After a few repetitions, only the viruses that happen to bind strongly remain. The process allows the researchers to quickly engineer viruses to bind to a particular material, even if they don't know ahead of time what sequence of amino acids is likely to work.
Funny how the ICR deciced to comment on a science article by a reporter who probably flunked JR high school biology instead of using more detailed technical reports.
I took a sourced comment from NPR at face value. Who's trying to deceive whom?