Isolation and Purification of Immunoglobulin Y(igy) from Chickens’ Egg Yolk for Snake Anti-Venom Development

Student: Nimatallah Muhammad Bashir (Project, 2025)
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto, Sokoto State

Abstract

ABSTRACT Snake envenoming is a neglected tropical disease with important public health concern, particularly in rural areas of the tropics. Unfortunately, antivenom is the only definitive and most effective treatment available for its treatment. The current method of isolation of immunoglobulin G (IgG) from horse serum used for antivenom is time consuming, has low yield and involves the use of caprylic acid and ammonium sulphate. Regrettably, Immunoglobulin Y (IgY) from egg yolk of birds, an alternative to IgG is not precipitated by neither Caprylic acid nor Ammonium Sulphate. Accordingly, this research therefore aims to develop a fast and more effective method for the isolation and purification of IgY from egg yolk. Sequential Precipitation was carried out using Polyethylene Glycol 6000 (3.5%,8.5%,12%), followed by centrifugation and dialysis. Each purification step was monitored at 280 nm and SDS-PAGE was used to determine the purity of the IgY. The reducing SDS-PAGE shows confirms the heavy and light chain at 68 and 27 KD respectively on the gel. Our findings indicate that our method is a cheap and effective means of isolating IgY from egg yolk and may be a better alternative for the production of antivenom.

Keywords
Immunoglobulin Y Snake Antivenom Antivenom Development Egg Yolk Chicken Egg Yolk IgY Purification PEG 6000 Polyethylene Glycol Sequential Precipitation Snake Envenoming
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