ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,344,872, issued on July 1, was assigned to Codexis Inc. (Redwood City, Calif.).

"Engineered ligase variants" was invented by Mathew G. Miller (San Carlos, Calif.), Jonathan Vroom (South San Francisco, Calif.), Nikki Dellas (Mountain View, Calif.), Donald S. Baskerville (Burlingame, Calif.), Sandy M. Gomes (Redwood City, Calif.), David Elgart (San Mateo, Calif.) and Judy Victoria Antonio Viduya (South San Francisco, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides engineered ligase polypeptides and compositions thereof, as well as polynucleotides encoding the engineered ligase polypeptides. The invention also provides m...