Michael Sinclair, PhD, Laboratory Director & Co-owner,
Microcheck, Inc.
Dr. Michael Sinclair is the Laboratory Director and co-owner of
Microcheck, Inc. an independent cGMP contract laboratory he
founded in 1988 which specializes in the identification of bacteria,
actinomycetes, yeasts, and fungi. The company supports quality
control programs for the pharmaceutical, medical device, personal
health, sterile manufacturing and packaging, agriculture/food, raw
materials, water testing, research, biomediation, and other related industries. Well over 400,000
isolates have been identified to species at Microcheck since 1988. Microcheck’s scientific teams are
experts in bacterial identification, fungal identification, gene sequencing, environmental monitoring,
and microbiology testing. Prior to 1988, Dr. Sinclair spent 19 years as a university professor teaching
biology, microbiology, cell biology and biochemistry. In the last three of those years, he also served as
a microbiological consultant to the beer industry and continues to do so. He holds a BA from
Swarthmore College and an MS and PhD from the University of Delaware. He also completed a year of
postdoctoral work at the University of Delaware studying plant defense mechanisms. Currently Dr.
Sinclair and Applied Biosystems are collaborating on expanding the fungal database for the MicroSEQ
ID system, as was announced in April 2009. Microbial identification is becoming increasingly important
because pharmaceutical companies need to monitor their manufacturing environment for the presence
of bacteria and fungi. A molecular approach to microbial identification has significantly improved the
timely identification of these microorganisms. Part of effective molecular analysis is having
comprehensive information in the databases used to compare the molecular properties of
microorganisms.