The Laboratory Response Network (LRN) is a collaborative effort within the US federal government involving the Association of Public Health Laboratories

Association of Public Health Laboratories

The Association of Public Health Laboratories is a membership organization in the United States representing the laboratories that protect the health and safety of the public. In collaboration with members, APHL advances laboratory systems and practices, and promotes policies that support healthy...

 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...

 (CDC). Most state public health laboratories participate as reference laboratories (formerly level B/C) of the LRN. These facilities support hundreds of sentinel (formerly level A) laboratories in local hospitals throughout the United States and can provide sophisticated confirmatory diagnosis and typing of biological agent

Biological agent

A biological agent — also called bio-agent or biological threat agent — is a bacterium, virus, prion, or fungus which may cause infection, allergy, toxicity or otherwise create a hazard to human health. They can be used as a biological weapon in bioterrorism or biological warfare...

s that may be used in a bioterrorist attack or other bio-agent incident. The LRN was established in 1999.

Sentinel Laboratories

These laboratories, found in many hospitals and local public health facilities, have the ability to rule out specific bioterrorism threat agents, to handle specimens safely, and to forward specimens to higher-level labs within the network.

Reference Laboratories

These laboratories (more than 100), typically found at state health departments and at military, veterinary, agricultural, and water-testing facilities, can rule on the presence of the various biological threat agents. They can use BSL-3 practices and can often conduct nucleic acid amplification

Polymerase chain reaction

The polymerase chain reaction is a scientific technique in molecular biology to amplify a single or a few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence....

 and molecular typing studies.

National Laboratories

These laboratories, including those at CDC and U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), can use BSL-4 practices and serve as the final authority in the evaluation of potential bioterrorism specimens. They provide specialized reagents to lower level laboratories and have the ability to bank specimens, perform serotyping, and detect genetic recombinant

Genetic recombination

Genetic recombination is a process by which a molecule of nucleic acid is broken and then joined to a different one. Recombination can occur between similar molecules of DNA, as in homologous recombination, or dissimilar molecules, as in non-homologous end joining. Recombination is a common method...

s and chimera

Chimera (genetics)

A chimera or chimaera is a single organism that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated from different zygotes involved in sexual reproduction. If the different cells have emerged from the same zygote, the organism is called a mosaic...

s.