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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Sarah Johnson

GM mosquitoes: inside the lab breeding six-legged agents in the war on malaria

A woman in a white lab coat sits in a room bathed in blue light looking at a screen on which green-glowing larvae can be seen.
Oxitec’s team leader, Anna Schoenauer, studies mosquito larvae and pupae. The green glow comes from a marker injected with their modified DNA that shows they carry the altered gene. Photograph: Tom Pilston/The Guardian

In an unassuming building on an industrial estate outside Oxford, Michal Bilski sits in a windowless room with electric fly swatters and sticky tape on the wall, peering down a microscope. On the slide before him is a line of mosquito eggs that he collected less than an hour previously and put into position with a brush.

Bilski manoeuvres a small needle filled with a DNA concoction and uses it to pierce each egg and inject a tiny amount.

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