Verenium Corporation was a

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

-based industrial

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used ...

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 Enzymes () are proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecules known as products ...

s used in industrial applications, including biofuel generation,

hydraulic fracturing Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "fra ...

. Verenium was acquired by

BASF BASF SE () is a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The BASF Group comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries ...

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. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy b ...

markets. Using proprietary and patented

genomic Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

technologies, BASF extracts microbial DNA directly from collected samples to avoid the slow and often impossible task of growing microbes in the laboratory. BASF then mines its collection of microbial

genes In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

, 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. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA ...

, 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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