Verrucosispora maris, the bacteria in which the enzyme was found. Scientists at the Universities of Bristol and Newcastle have uncovered the secret of the 'Mona Lisa of chemical reactions' - in a bacterium that lives at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

This is a male specimen of the new long-horned beetle species Borneostyrax cristatus gen. et sp. nov. A remarkably high diversity of the wingless long-horned beetles in the mountains of northern Borneo is reported by three Czech researchers from the Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. Apart from the genera and species new to science, the entomologists report the first case of reproduction by live birth in this rarely collected group of beetles.

Close-up of the MinION handheld DNA sequencer. A team from the University of Leicester has been awarded a prize for their proposal to crack down on wildlife crime using a portable DNA sequencing device, the MinION - developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies - to read the 'barcode genes' of animals affected by illegal trafficking.

A cryo-electron microscopy image of the Zika virus structure. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) have established the first models of Zika virus transmission from a pregnant mouse to her fetus. The infected mice, described May 11 in Cell, demonstrate Zika virus invasion and damage to the placenta, and then infection of the mouse fetus, leading to many of the same conditions observed in human infants. The new mouse models can also be used as a tool to develop treatments or vaccines.

This photo demonstrates the difference in size in Zika virus-infected vs. uninfected fetal mouse brains. Mouse fetuses injected with the Asian Zika virus strain and carried to term within their pregnant mothers display the characteristic features of microcephaly, researchers in China report May 11 in Cell Stem Cell. As expected, the virus infected the neural progenitor cells, and infected brains reveal expression of genes related to viral entry, altered immune response, and cell death. The authors say this is direct evidence that Zika infection causes microcephaly in a mammalian animal model.