Gen-Probe believes that its innovative nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies have the potential to revolutionize the industrial microbiology market, just as the Company’s clinical diagnostics products displaced slower, less accurate tests for infectious diseases more than 20 years ago. Today, more than a billion microbiology tests are performed annually in a wide range of industrial settings, from food and water testing to ensuring the sterility of manufacturing processes. Approximately three-quarters of these tests are performed with traditional culture methods, which can take days and sometimes weeks to deliver results. In contrast,