San Diego, California
January 9, 2001

Diversa Corporation (Nasdaq: DVSA) today announced that it has successfully achieved all development milestones in its collaboration with Zymetrics. Zymetrics is a contract joint venture formed in December 1999 between Diversa and Syngenta to pursue opportunities in animal nutrition and agricultural product processing. Diversa has delivered an animal feed product candidate and several promising leads for other applications and will receive an undisclosed milestone payment for these accomplishments. 

"We are extremely pleased by the dedication of the Diversa team and the effectiveness of Diversa's proprietary discovery and evolution technology platforms," stated James Tuan, President of Zymetrics. "We expect this product candidate to be the first of many products to be marketed by Zymetrics that will set a new performance standard for the industry." 

Zymetrics is focused on the development and marketing of enzyme-based products and processes designed to enhance the nutritional content of animal feeds, improve the health and performance of animals, minimize the environmental impact of intense animal production, and enable new opportunities for novel products from the processing of agricultural outputs. Diversa is receiving research support, and will participate in profit sharing on products commercialized by the venture. 

"Zymetrics combines the breadth of the world's largest agricultural company, Syngenta, with
Diversa's extensive gene discovery and evolution platforms for rapid commercialization of innovative products," stated Jay M. Short, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Diversa Corporation. 

Diversa Corporation is a global leader in developing and applying proprietary technologies to discover and evolve novel genes and gene pathways from diverse environmental sources. Diversa is utilizing 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. Within these broad markets, Diversa is targeting key multi-billion dollar market segments where the company believes its technologies and products will create high value and competitive advantages for strategic partners and customers. Diversa's strategic partners are market leaders and include Aventis Animal Nutrition S.A., Celanese Ltd., Celera Genomics, Danisco Cultor, The Dow Chemical Company, Glaxo Wellcome plc, IntraBiotics Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Invitrogen Corporation, Syngenta (formerly Novartis) Agribusiness Biotechnology Research, Inc., and Syngenta (formerly Novartis) Seeds AG. Diversa has also formed joint ventures with The Dow Chemical Company (Innovase LLC) and with Syngenta Seeds AG (Zymetrics).

Company news release
N3239