Microbial IDentification Inc (MIDI) is a privately held, veteran-owned biotechnology company based in Newark, Delaware USA. The company has been developing rapid microbial identification solutions for clinical and environmental microbiology laboratories under the Sherlock brand name since 1991. The fatty acid-based technology behind the Sherlock brand was created in the early 1980s out of a partnership between the Hewlett-Packard Co. (later became Agilent Technologies in 1999) and Dr. Myron Sasser in University of Delaware's Plant Pathology Department. The goal of the partnership was to create a rapid phenotypic method for the identification of plant pathogenic bacteria based on gas chromatographic analysis of cellular fatty acids (GC-FAME). The original product was named the HP Microbial Identification System and released in 1985.
