IL15 and scrapie: Marcos-Carcavilla et al. (2007) studied the IL-1 family members as candidate genes for scrapie susceptibility detection in sheep. However, no studies on goats were published up-to-date. IL-15γ, IL-15Rβ and IL-15Rα are composing the chains of the interleukin-15 receptor (IL-15R). In human interleukin-15 receptor alpha is a high affinity IL-15 binding protein that is crucial for mediating IL-15 functions such as memory CD8 T, cell proliferation and NK, NK/T cell, and intestinal intraepithelial lymphocyte development (Schluns, Stoklasek & Lefrançois, 2005).