Scientist grows butterfly wing in laboratory

Professor Parker hopes to find a way of making the microscopic structures in the insect’s wing which act like tiny prisms

Professor Andrew Parker from the Natural History Museum has cultured cells from a blue morpho butterfly’s wing (The Natural History Museum)

The brightly iridescent colours seen in the wings of some insects could one day be used in paints and cosmetics, according to a scientist who has managed to grow the wing of a tropical butterfly in a laboratory for the first time.

Professor Andrew Parker, of the Natural History Museum in London, grew a wing of the blue morpho – distinguished by its metallic-blue wings – from embryonic wing scales. He hoped to find a way of making the microscopic structures in the insect’s wing which act like tiny prisms, splitting light into different colours.

“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,” Dr Parker said.