Your Guide to the Year in Science: 2008

New Digs for Biodefense Researchers

Officials are set to build the next agro-terrorism research center

Two miles off the tip of Long Island, New York, sits an 840-acre island that houses the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The researchers working inside the Plum Island facility represent the country's front line against such animal diseases as foot-and-mouth. But the Plum Island buildings were built in 1954, and the facility cannot handle some of the pathogens that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) believes are likely to be used by terrorists as weapons against our food supply and national health.

This October, DHS will select a location for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility, a $450-million animal and zoonotic (able to jump from animal to human) disease lab to study potential agro-terrorism threats. Six locations are in the running for the 520,000-square-foot facility. Five are on the mainland; the sixth is a new facility on Plum Island. (It's illegal to study foot-and-mouth disease on the mainland, so Congress will have to get involved if DHS chooses one of those five sites.)

In addition to typical agro-disease research, 10 percent of the facility will be used for Biosafety Level IV research, the study of lethal, exotic or contagious diseases or agents that pose the most risk to humans. At the top of the list for such research at the new lab: the Nipah and Hendra viruses, which were discovered recently in Malaysia and Australia and have proven deadly to many of those who've been infected.

"It's all part of the overall threat analysis to mitigate the threat against U.S. agriculture," says James Johnson, the head of laboratories for DHS. "Plum Island has been the front line, but we've got other threats that we need to deal with."-Kate Pickert

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