The business scope expanded significantly when it acquired the rival biotechnology and cell culture company Life Technologies in 2000; Life had been formed in 1983 when GIBCO (Grand Island Biological Company) which had been founded around 1960 in New York, merged with a reagent company called Bethesda Research Laboratories. The company continued to add technologies through a series of mergers and acquisitions, which broadened its customer base and strengthened its intellectual property portfolio. Among these, established companies such as Ethrog Biotechnology, Molecular Probes (fluorescence-based detection), Dynal (magnetic bead–based separation), Panvera (proteins and assays for drug screening), InforMax (software for computational biology and bioinformatics), BioSource (cellular pathway analysis), CellzDirect (cell products and services for research) and Zymed and Caltag Laboratories (primary and secondary antibodies) have been brought under the Invitrogen brand. Invitrogen acquired Sequitur in 2003 to obtain Sequitur's proprietary Stealth(TM) RNAi technology.