The brand is focused on integrated systems for genetic analysis, which include computerized machines and the consumables used within them (such as reagents).

[1] Through the 1980s and early 1990s, Applied Biosystems, Inc. operated independently and manufactured biochemicals and automated genetic engineering and diagnostic research instruments, including the principal brand of DNA sequencing machine used by the Human Genome Project consortium centers.

In 1981, the company was founded by two scientist/engineers from Hewlett Packard, Sam Eletr and André Marion based on technology developed by Leroy Hood and Marvin H.

[8] As late as 1990, Brownlee publicly discussed what had been his contributions in the rocky relationship with Applied, before he died early the next year.

The Model 340A Nucleic Acid Extractor became used in medical labs to isolate DNA from bacteria, blood, and tissue.

[1] By 1988, the product line had increased to over 25 different automated instruments, over 400 liquid chromatography columns and components, and about 320 chemicals, biochemicals, and consumables.

That year the company was the world's leading manufacturer of instruments and reagents for polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

It marketed PCR reagents kits in alliance with Hoffman-La Roche Inc.[3] In 1994, Perkin-Elmer reported net revenues of over $1 billion, of which Life Sciences accounted for 42% of the business.

[1] In 1995, upon Andre Marion retirement, Mike Hunkapiller became President of PE Applied Biosystems Division which sold its 30,000th thermal cycler.

To meet Human Genome Project goals, Perkin-Elmer developed mapping kits with markers every 10 million bases along each chromosome.

[12] In 1996 the company was reorganized into two separate operating divisions, Analytical Instruments and PE Applied Biosystems.

The PE Applied Biosystems division partnered with Hyseq, Inc., for work on the new DNA chip technology, and also worked with Tecan U.S., Inc., on combinatorial chemistry automation systems, and also with Molecular Informatics, Inc. on genetic data management and analysis automated systems.

[15][16] Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., had been the founder, Chairman, and CEO of PerSeptive, and with the Perkin-Elmer successor company he set up the later tracking stock for Celera.

While planning the next new generation of machines, PE Biosystems' president, Michael W. Hunkapiller, calculated that it would be possible for their own private industry to decode the human genome before the academic consortium could complete it, by using the resources of a single, industrial-scale center, even though it would require starting from scratch.

Also, it meant that Dr. Hunkapiller's idea would require competing against his own customers, to all of whom Applied Biosystems sold its sequencing machines and their chemical reagents.

[2] Also in 1998, PE Biosystems partnered with Hitachi, Ltd. to develop electrophoresis-based genetic analysis systems, which resulted in their chief new genomics instrument, the ABI PRISM 3700 DNA Analyzer, which advanced the Human Genome sequencing project by nearly five years ahead of schedule.

[1][17] The new machine cost US$300,000 each, but was a major leap beyond its predecessor, the 377, and was fully automated, allowing genetic decoding to run around the clock with little supervision.

According to Venter, the machine was so revolutionary that it could decode in a single day the same amount of genetic material that most DNA labs could produce in a year.

The machine proved to be so fast that by late March 1999 the consortium announced that it had revised its timeline, and would release by the Spring of 2000 a "first draft sequence" for 80% of the human genome.

[23] Celera that year made milestone headlines when it announced that it had completed the sequencing and first assembly of the two largest genomes in history, that of the fruit fly, and of the human.

[24] In 2001, the Applied Biosystems division of Applera reached revenues of US$1.6 billion,[25] and developed a new workstation instrument specifically for the new field of proteomics, which had become Celera's new core business focus, as it shifted away from gene discovery.

[26] In 2002, Applied Biosystems reached revenues of US$1.6 billion for the year, and took control from Celera of the support of Celera Discovery System (CDS), a data tool to answer specific genomic and proteomic queries, involving the new genetic data field of tens of thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the human genome.

The company developed another new tool, which combined the first ever union of triple quadrupole and ion trap technologies, in proteomics research.

Celera would retain responsibility for its maintenance and support to existing customers, and would receive royalties from Applied Biosystems.

[29] Applera collaborated with General Electric, Abbott Laboratories, Seattle Genetics, and Merck in diagnostics development.

Applied Biosystmes also teamed with Northrop Grumman and Cepheid of Sunnyvale, California, to detect Bacillus anthracis during the anthrax contamination case of the U.S.

[31][32] That year, with the Influenza A Subtype H5N1 "avian flu" strain scare, the company launched a global initiative to identify and track such infectious diseases.

[34] In November 2008, Applied Biosystems merged with Invitrogen, forming Life Technologies,[6] which was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2014.