A particularly important aspect of immunology is to develop non-invasive methods of obtaining antibodies which could be a great alternative to traditional ones that based on the harmful procedure of isolation of immunoglobulins from animal blood sera. That’s why the extraction of antibodies from poultry egg yolks (IgY) is the most promising. Due to the fact of variation of IgY structural features that determine the definite immunochemical properties, yolk antibodies in comparison with mammalian immunoglobulins (IgG) does not interact with rheumatoid factor (Rf), contribute to the activation of the complement system, bind to the Fc-receptor (FcR), and also has weak cross-reactivity, which confirms the possibility of their widespread use in medicine and food. Also the presence of phylogenetic distance between chickens and mammalians guarantees immune response against conservative mammalian protein molecules which is highly important for the creation of new generation test systems.
The aim of this work is to develop a selective method of producing high-purity immunoglobulin Y preparations from the yolk of chicken eggs.
There were adopted selective conditions of isolation of IgY under spontaneous thawing procedure at the room temperature of firstly frozen yolk solution in a sodium-phosphate buffer mixed with water (pH 5.0) in a ratio of 1:6, which leads to receiving a water-soluble fraction further precipitated with the sodium chloride at a concentration of 10% of the solution mass and subsequently concentrated using ultrafiltration with membrane UAM-10, that allows achieving the content of IgY not less than 95% per dry substance in immunoglobulin fraction. It is possible to produce a protein fraction with a protein content of at least 9 g/l.
The purity of the immunoglobulin fraction was verified using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The presence of a light chain in the IgY solution was proved to be a low-molecular compound using the method of gel-filtration-chromatography. The immunological activity of IgY was studied with respect to bovine serum albumin (BSA) as an antigen. The enzymatic resistance of IgY against proteolytic enzymes was tested in area of the gastrointestinal tract.