BioMicro Systems was founded in 2000 to develop and improve microfluidic microarray sample processing. Microarrays are tools used by major pharmaceutical companies and research laboratories to sift through and analyze information contained within a genome. A microarray consists of different nucleic acid probes that are chemically attached to a substrate, which can be a microchip, a glass slide or a microsphere-sized bead. In 2003 BioMicro Systems launched the MAUI Hybridization System, a cutting-edge microarray instrument designed to target the processing bottleneck encountered during the critical hybridization step in gene expression studies. To date, BioMicro Systems has sold over 550 MAUI Systems worldwide.