WASHINGTON -- Sites in Texas and four other states are finalists for a $450 million national lab where killer germs like anthrax, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease will be studied, Texas' U.S. senators said Wednesday.

Texas Research Park in northwest San Antonio is one of the possible hosts for the 520,000-acre National Bio- and Agro-Defense Lab, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said. Federal officials also have chosen sites in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, said Sen. John Cornyn.

The sites were chosen by a team from the Homeland Security Department, the Agriculture Department and Health and Human Services. A phone message left with Homeland Security wasn't immediately returned.

Texas had proposed three sites in San Antonio and one in Bryan-College Station offered by Texas A&M University.

The facility will replace an aging, smaller lab at Plum Island, N.Y., where security lapses after the 2001 terrorist attacks drew scrutiny from Congress and government investigators. It would bring at least 300 lab-related jobs, and more in construction.

Congress provided money for the $47 million design and architecture, but no money has been appropriated for construction or operations.

The winner should be announced next year, with the lab operating by 2014.