Diagnosis of deadly brain conditions could be helped by new research from the Roslin Institute and University of Manchester, showing how the infectious proteins that cause the disease spread.
A study reveals how the proteins - called prions - spread from the gut to the brain after a person or animal has eaten contaminated meat.
The findings could aid earlier diagnosis of prion diseases such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in man, scrapie in sheep and goats, and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.