Diversa Hits Pay Dirt With Latest Microbe

A research scientist scuba diving off the coast of Italy for Diversa Corp. recovered a heat-loving microbe in a thermal vent at the site of an extinct volcano. The San Diego biotechnology company, which scours the world looking for useful organisms, has turned that discovery into a commercial product: an enzyme that functions under extremes of pressure and temperature and that can be used in the recovery of oil from depleted fields.

Privately held Diversa announced last week that it had signed a sales agreement with Halliburton Co. for production of the enzyme in multi-ton quantities. The product will be added to fluids that Halliburton uses to fracture underground rocks--releasing oil or natural gas that would otherwise be difficult to recover. The enzyme slowly digests the gunky residues that build up in the oil-extraction process, explained Diversa Chief Executive Terrance J. Bruggeman.

To produce industrial quantities of the chemical, Diversa plucked the gene for the enzyme from the heat-loving microbe and inserted it into common bacteria, grown in a huge fermenting vat.

The Halliburton deal is the first commercial sale for the 4-year-old Diversa, which has won attention periodically for the deals it has made around the world to gain access to microbes it calls “extremophiles”--microorganisms that function under extreme conditions. In 1997, for example, Diversa signed a five-year agreement with Yellowstone National Park, giving the firm bioprospecting rights to the park’s geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and boiling mud pots.