Verenium Corporation was a

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

-based industrial

biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...

company founded in 2007 as the result of a merger between Diversa (San Diego) and Celunol (Cambridge, MA). The company specialized in research and development for the production of high performance

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

s used in industrial applications, including biofuel generation, hydraulic fracturing. Verenium was acquired by

BASF BASF SE (), an initialism of its original name , is a European Multinational corporation, multinational company and the List of largest chemical producers, largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters are located in Ludwigshafen, Ge ...

corporation in 2013. The company's tailored enzymes are environmentally friendly, making products and processes greener and more cost-effective for industries including the global food and

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

markets. Using proprietary and patented genomic technologies, BASF extracts microbial

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

directly from collected samples to avoid the slow and often impossible task of growing

microbes A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in ...

in the laboratory. BASF then mines its collection of microbial

genes In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

, numbering in the billions, using high-throughput screening technologies designed to identify unique enzymes as product candidates. As required, these enzymes can then be further optimized for commercial use through the company's patented DirectEvolution technologies. By combining discovery and laboratory evolution technologies, Verenium successfully developed and commercialized a suite of highly differentiated enzyme products tailored to meet the specific needs of companies in various markets, including grain processing,

biofuels Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricultural, domestic ...

, animal health and nutrition and other industries. These enzymes products are now offered by BASF. On September 20, 2013, Verenium entered an agreement to be acquired by

, with a 71% acquisition of Verenium.

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* {{Authority control Companies based in San Diego Biotechnology companies of the United States American companies established in 2007 Technology companies established in 2007

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