Training was held at the Navy Entomology Center of Excellence in December to get the REDI-NET Silver team up to speed on standardized operating procedures (SOPs) developed for field sample collection, sample storage, sample processing, sample testing, and sample shipping. The training was provided as a joint effort from all three Gold labs at the Naval Medical Research Center, Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit, University of Notre Dame, and the UND Center for Research Computing.
In the field, team members collected ticks, leeches, water, and soil samples with information about the environment collected on data collection sheets (DCSs).
Once in the lab, the DCSs were uploaded into the REDI-NET database. Samples were processed according to the respective SOP. Once processed, the samples were tested for known and unknown pathogens with the data being recorded in the REDI-NET custom web application.