Butterfly wings successfully grown in laboratory

Scientists have successfully grown a wing of the blue morpho butterfly in the laboratory.

Professor Andrew Parker, of the Natural History Museum in London hopes to find a way of making the microscopic structures in the insect's wing which act like tiny prisms, splitting light into different colours and the brightly iridescent colours seen in the wings of some insects could one day be used in paints and cosmetics, the Independent reported.

Parker added that conventional pigments work by absorbing some wavelengths of light and scattering others. But the wings of the blue morpho contain transparent structures that refract light in a way that gives it its vivid colouration.