Overview

Diversa Corp. develops and applies proprietary technologies to discover novel genes and gene pathways from diverse environmental sources. It utilizes its fully integrated approach to develop novel enzymes and other biologically active compounds, such as small-molecule drugs. Diversa’s proprietary evolution technologies facilitate the optimization of genes found in nature to enable product solutions for the pharmaceutical, agricultural, chemical processing and industrial markets.

Its discovery capabilities allow the identification of starting material for enzymes and small molecules. This genetic starting material is catalogued and stored in gene libraries and then screened using methods capable of analyzing more than a billion genes per day. Diversa is capable of optimizing selected enzymes and compounds by applying a suite of gene evolution technologies, including Gene Site Saturation Mutagenisis (GSSM) and GeneReassembly.

The company has developed and automated its GigaMatrix platform, an ultra-high-throughput screening platform that permits rapid screening of genes and gene pathways, and is expected to increase the productivity of Diversa’s discovery programs for products such as novel enzymes and small-molecule drugs. The screening platform also is being adapted to Diversa’s antibody and protein therapeutic programs, which require rapid screening of the antibody and protein variants created by Diversa’s evolution technologies.

Diversa has three commercialized products Pyrolase, Thermalace and Replicase enzymes for applications in the chemical, molecular biology, oil and textiles industries. The company also has a collection of environmental libraries encoding bioactive molecules, available through its Enzyme Subscription Program.

Partners

Diversa’s strategic partners include Aventis Animal Nutrition SA, Celanese Ltd., Celera Genomics Inc., Danisco Cultor, The Dow Chemical Co., GlaxoSmithKline plc, Invitrogen Corp., Agribusiness Biotechnology Research Inc. and Syngenta (formerly Novartis) Seeds AG. Diversa also has formed joint ventures with The Dow Chemical Co. (Innovase LLC) and with Syngenta Seeds AG (Zymetrics).