By Christian Jennings

PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 31 March 2012 UPDATED: 16:00 EST, 31 March 2012

A female Anopheles mosquito in flight with a newly obtained blood meal visible through her abdomen

Its the middle of the day and the genetically modified mosquitoes are feeding.

The females of the species are ingesting what is known in mosquito parlance as their blood meal.

The tiny-winged insects cluster in their thousands on the small plastic dispensers of sugar solution, or hang upside down from a thin layer of transparent plastic attached to the top of their cage.

The plastic is designed to simulate human or animal skin, and trapped behind it is a film of horse blood.

There are hundreds of thousands of the insects in the small white plastic cages on the laboratory shelves in a south Oxfordshire industrial park.

The air in the laboratory is warm and theres a smell of chemicals.

In plastic and glass containers thousands more mosquitoes are hatching in water that has a yellowish tint to it: they swarm together and move with the light every time a hand is passed over the surface of the container.

Continue reading here:
Mosquito factory: Can malaria be stopped by British-bred genetically modified mosquitoes?