On Jul. 2, 2003, Invitrogen bought Molecular Probes for $325 million in cash. The company became part of Life Technologies, through the merger of Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems, and is now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, following Fisher’s acquisition of Life Technologies in 2014.

Molecular Probes was founded in 1975 by Richard (Dick) and Rosaria Haugland in their kitchen in Minnesota. The biotechnology company located in Eugene, Oregon specialized in fluorescence.