Aves Labs offers a wide variety of Chicken IgYs, including our popular Anti-Green Fluorescent Protein Antibody (GFP), Anti-mCherry Antibody, and our Anti-Tyrosine Hydroxylase Antibody.
Since chickens are at least 100 million years removed from mammals, they tend to recognize any mammalian gene product as foreign and mount vigorous immune responses.
Chicken IgYs can be used together with mouse and rabbit antibodies, without the danger of cross-reactivity. Secondary antibodies against chicken IgYs don’t cross-react with mammalian IgGs.
We purify the antibodies from eggs, not serum. With rabbits, in contrast, serum is obtained by restraining the animals, and performing ear bleeds or cardiac puncture. It is simply a more humane way to produce antibodies.
Our chicken antibody preparations are >90% IgY, and have shelf-lives of 5 years or more at 4˚C. In contrast, rabbit serum (which is what most companies provide) has only a limited shelf-life at 4˚C (measured in weeks-to-months), and some biological activity is lost when frozen. The cost of having rabbit antibodies purified to comparable purities (i.e., protein A-purified) is very costly.
We collect about 18 "immune eggs" from each hen, but only use 6 "immune eggs" to prepare your IgY preparation. We then store the remaining 12 "immune eggs" in the refrigerator, in case you need more antibody down the road. Moreover, we can continue to house the hens (for an additional charge), in case you want us to perform additional injections.
This provides several advantages over rabbit IgGs:
Chicken IgYs contain a larger glycosylation index, allowing more labeling with HRP and other antibody tags. This produces higher signals.
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The rate of antibody production in laying chickens is remarkable. According to Larsson et al. (1993), "in one week, a hen produces egg antibodies equivalent to 90-100 ml of serum." This article also states that "only large mammals, such as cows or horses, can produce more antibodies than a laying hen." Gassmann et al. (1990) states that "the amount of purified IgY produced in one month is 18 times higher than that of IgG produced in a rabbit."
]]>Chicken IgY is the major circulating antibody found in chickens and is the avian counterpart to mammalian IgG. IgY is equivalent to IgG in most experimental applications, including Western Blot, ELISA, Immunohistochemistry, Immunocytochemistry, and function blocking experiments.
IgY has the same general structure as mammalian IgG, with two heavy chains ("nu" chains at ~67-70 kDa) and two light chains (at 22-30 kDa) (see figure).
The molecular weight of the whole IgY molecule is about 180 kDa, but it often runs as a smear on gels due to the presence of about 3% carbohydrate. Heavy chains of IgY are composed of four constant domains and one variable domain, which contains the antigen-binding site. Unlike the gamma-chains of IgG, however, the heavy chains of IgY lack Fc domains, which means that IgY neither fixes, complements, nor binds protein A or protein G. Chickens also produce an alternatively-spliced form of the heavy chain in which the Cnu3 and Cnu4 domains are deleted. In some individual hens, this F(ab)2-like heavy chain can be seen running at 40 kDa in SDS-(10%) polyacrylamide gels.
]]>Hens naturally transfer their circulating IgY antibodies into their eggs as a means of conferring passive immunity to their offspring. Although the eggs used for antibody production at Aves Labs are not fertilized, they contain about 100mg of IgY per yolk.
]]>The 12-week production schedule includes:
Customers requesting that Aves Labs synthesize peptides and conjugate them to carrier proteins should add two (2) weeks to the production schedule (14 weeks total).
Customers requesting affinity purification and/or ELISA analysis should add an additional two (2) weeks (16 weeks total).
]]>Needless to say, we are in the business of providing high-quality chicken IgY because we think it is well worth your consideration. Here's our list of pros and cons when it comes to the nature and use of chicken IgY as a research tool.
We count six major advantages of using chicken IgY as a research tool:
There are two potential downsides of chicken IgY, and some minor inconveniences:
There is only one isoform of IgY. This makes it unlike IgG, which arises from multiple gamma heavy chain isotypes, including IgG1, IgG2a, and others. Like mammalian IgG, however, chicken IgY consists of two heavy and two light chains and contain two antigen binding domains.
Although it features some minor physicochemical differences, in terms of thermal- and acid-stability, when compared with rabbit IgG, chicken IgY can be used in all of the same research applications, including Western Blot, Immunohistochemistry, Immunocytochemistry, Immunoprecipitation, ELISA and protein microarrays.
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