San Diego, California
December 5,  2001

Diversa Corporation (Nasdaq: DVSA) today announced key management appointments and promotions.

Diversa appointed:
-- Lisa Moss to Senior Director of Pharmaceutical Business Development,
-- Mick Noordewier, Ph.D. to Senior Director of Bioinformatics,
-- Bruce Kimmel, Ph.D. to Director of Protein Therapeutics, and
-- Geoffrey Hazlewood, Ph.D. to Director of Industrial Enzyme Products

In addition, Diversa promoted:
-- Mervyn Bibb, Ph.D. to Senior Director, Small Molecule Discovery, and
-- Mike Lafferty to Director, Engineering Technology

Lisa Moss has joined the pharmaceutical business development team at Diversa. Prior to joining Diversa, she served as Vice President of Business Development in North America for Cambridge Discovery Chemistry, which was acquired by Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in 2000. There, she was responsible for creating a stand-alone chemistry organization, spearheading U.S. contracts with biotech, pharmaceutical, and agrochemical companies, and brokering product candidate deals.

Mick Noordewier, Ph.D. will be responsible for bioinformatics at Diversa. He joined Diversa from GlaxoSmithKline plc, where he was head of Anti- Infective Bioinformatics. At GlaxoSmithKline, Dr. Noordewier's group identified therapeutic protein targets in microorganisms and identified human proteins that mediate host response to infection and therapy. In addition, he helped develop a
bioinformatics software infrastructure for the analysis of genomic expression and data, and an identification system for the classification of unknown proteins.

Bruce Kimmel, Ph.D. will be responsible for developing Diversa's protein therapeutics and antibody programs. Prior to joining Diversa, he was Director and Department Head of Functional Genomics for Amgen, Inc., where he was integral to the establishment of Amgen's therapeutic antibody effort. At Amgen, Dr. Kimmel was responsible for programs in antibody and peptide phage display.

Geoffrey Hazlewood, Ph.D. will be responsible for the commercialization of industrial enzyme products at Diversa. Before joining Diversa, he served as Technology Director for Finnfeeds International, a division of Danisco Cultor. There, he oversaw the execution of Research and Development projects and managed both Quality and Intellectual Property Groups. Before joining Finnfeeds, Dr. Hazlewood was Deputy Director and Head of the Biomolecules Program at the Babraham Institute, an independent life sciences research institute sponsored by Britain's lead funding agency for academic research in the life sciences.

Mervyn Bibb, Ph.D. joined Diversa in November of 2000 as head of Diversa's small molecule discovery efforts and is responsible for the advancement of Diversa's microbial natural products drug discovery technologies. Dr. Bibb has over 25 years of experience in the field of Streptomyces genetics, focusing particularly on the regulation and manipulation of antibiotic production. He worked previously at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, U.K., where he served as Principal Scientific Officer and as Head of the Molecular Microbiology Department.

Mike Lafferty joined Diversa in 1997 to head the Engineering Technology Department. At Diversa, he has led the successful advancement of several activity-based high-throughput screening systems. Prior to joining Diversa, Mr. Lafferty co-founded Volution Inc., where he spent 10 years developing and commercializing a variety of electro-chemical and optical sensing systems.

Diversa Corporation is a global leader in developing and applying proprietary technologies to discover and evolve novel genes and gene pathways from diverse sources. The Company is utilizing its fully integrated approach to develop novel enzymes and other biologically active compounds, such as orally active drugs, produced by these genes and gene pathways. The Company's proprietary evolution technologies facilitate the optimization of genes to enable product solutions for the pharmaceutical, agricultural, chemical processing, and industrial markets. Within these broad markets, the Company is targeting key multi-billion dollar market segments where it believes its technologies and products will create high value and competitive advantages for strategic partners and customers. The Company's strategic partners are market leaders and include Aventis Animal Nutrition S.A., Celera Genomics, The Dow Chemical Company, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Invitrogen Corporation, and Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. The Company has
also formed joint ventures with The Dow Chemical Company (named Innovase LLC) and with Syngenta Seeds AG (named Zymetrics, Inc.). Additional information is available at Diversa's website: www.diversa.com.

Company news release
N4020