Fig. 1

Graphical representation of the age of euthanasia of animals from TgShI112 L456 and L460 mouse lines. Every dot in the graph represents a mouse at the time it was euthanized. Dots with a red margin indicate TSE confirmed animals (by IDEXX ELISA, histopathology, and immunohistochemistry), all of which showed neurological clinical signs (except one animal that was found dead without previous signs, and two other animals that were euthanized due to a lung neoplasia and a massive bilateral hydrometra, respectively, and resulted positive in postmortem tests). A window (red rectangle) of time has been identified between 380 and 800 days of age (doa) in which clinical signs of a spontaneous TSE appear in both lines of the TgShI112 model. The remaining negative animals were euthanized for humanitarian reasons (i.e., final point criteria were reached due to signs unrelated to TSE) or in a programmed manner to obtain information at different time points