Advantages of the Chicken IgY Antibody

IgY as alternative to IgG for recognizing mammalian gene products

The last common ancestor of birds and mammals lived over 300 million years ago making the chicken proteome significantly different from the proteome of the commonly used mammalian antibody hosts rabbit and mouse. This is of critical importance when developing antibodies to mammalian proteins since the immune system of rabbits and mice will often ‘see’ the mammalian target protein they are immunized with as being similar to their own proteins and consequently may not develop a robust immune response. Whereas chickens typically react to a wider variety of epitopes on these conserved mammalian gene products since their immune system ‘sees’ these mammalian proteins as being more foreign to them. Ultimately this leads to a stronger immune response and better antibodies against conserved mammalian target proteins.

Multiplex Staining

IgY antibodies not only add another species to the list of primary antibodies used for staining, they also offer the additional advantage of reduced cross reactivity. IgY is structurally different enough from mammalian IgG that the secondary antibodies to IgY will not cross-react with your primary IgG antibodies.

IgY Stability

Chicken IgY is a thermally stable antibody and can be stored at 4C for decades without loss of activity. In fact purified IgY can be stored at room temp (25 C) for at least a year without any significant loss of activity and up to a month at 37 C before loss of activity occurs. IgY can be safely stored in the fridge for years and years, which will avoid any denaturing freeze-thaw cycles when storing in freezers.

IgY Yields from Eggs

Using eggs to purify IgY is not only animal friendly, as it’s a non-invasive method of antibody production, it also produces large amounts of antibody. Immunized hens can lay on average 20 eggs a month with each yolk containing as much as 100 ug of IgY. A monthly yield of 2 grams of antibody is equivalent to antibody derived from 300 ml of serum or 600 ml whole blood. Over the course of a year a single immunized laying hen could potentially yield as much antibody as a large mammal such as a horse.

IgY Structural Difference Advantages

While IgY is the functional equivalent to mammalian IgG the IgY “Fc” domain does not interact with the following immune-interacting proteins, which in many cases reduces unwanted background.

-Rheumatoid factor (RF), an autoantibody that recognizes the Fc domain of IgG

-The mammalian complement system in which many components of this system bind to the Fc domain of IgG or IgM.

-Various mammalian Fc Receptors found on the surface many cells.

-Bacterial Fc receptors such as Protein A from the bacteria Staphyococcus aureus .

If you have struggled to generate useful antibody reagents against conserved mammalian targets we encourage you to give chicken antibodies a try. We offer an economical custom antibody service and over the last 25 years have helped many research labs develop antibodies that helped push their research forward.

Recent citations using Aves Labs custom antibody services:

• Lewy TG, Offerdahl DK, Grabowski JM, Kellman E, Mlera L, Chiramel A, Bloom ME. PERK-Mediated Unfolded Protein Response Signaling Restricts Replication of the Tick-Borne Flavivirus Langat Virus. Viruses. 2020 Mar 18;12(3):328. doi: 10.3390/v12030328. PMID: 32197325; PMCID: PMC7150897.
• Kabrawala S, Zimmer MD, Campellone KG. WHIMP links the actin nucleation machinery to Src-family kinase signaling during protrusion and motility. PLoS Genet. 2020 Mar 20;16(3):e1008694. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008694. PMID: 32196488; PMCID: PMC7112243.
• Harper MM, Rudd D, Meyer KJ, Kanthasamy AG, Anantharam V, Pieper AA, Vázquez-Rosa E, Shin MK, Chaubey K, Koh Y, Evans LP, Bassuk AG, Anderson MG, Dutca L, Kudva IT, John M. Identification of chronic brain protein changes and protein targets of serum auto-antibodies after blast-mediated traumatic brain injury. Heliyon. 2020 Feb 17;6(2):e03374. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03374. PMID: 32099918; PMCID: PMC7029173.
• Yadav PK, Vitvitsky V, Carballal S, Seravalli J, Banerjee R. Thioredoxin regulates human mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase at physiologically-relevant concentrations. J Biol Chem. 2020 May 8;295(19):6299-6311. doi: 10.1074/jbc.RA120.012616. Epub 2020 Mar 16. PMID: 32179647; PMCID: PMC7212645.
• Kahng SJ, Soelberg SD, Fondjo F, Kim JH, Furlong CE, Chung JH. Carbon nanotube-based thin-film resistive sensor for point-of-care screening of tuberculosis. Biomed Microdevices. 2020 Jul 28;22(3):50. doi: 10.1007/s10544-020-00506-3. PMID: 32725281.
• Rein JL, Heja S, Flores D, Carrisoza-Gaytán R, Lin NYC, Homan KA, Lewis JA, Satlin LM. Effect of luminal flow on doming of mpkCCD cells in a 3D perfusable kidney cortical collecting duct model. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 2020 Jul 1;319(1):C136-C147. doi: 10.1152/ajpcell.00405.2019. Epub 2020 May 13. PMID: 32401606; PMCID: PMC7468887.
• Park HA, Mnatsakanyan N, Broman K, Davis AU, May J, Licznerski P, Crowe-White KM, Lackey KH, Jonas EA. Alpha-Tocotrienol Prevents Oxidative Stress-Mediated Post-Translational Cleavage of Bcl-xL in Primary Hippocampal Neurons. Int J Mol Sci. 2019 Dec 28;21(1):220. doi: 10.3390/ijms21010220. PMID: 31905614; PMCID: PMC6982044.
• LeBlanc BM, Hand SC. A novel group 6 LEA protein from diapause embryos of Artemia franciscana is cytoplasmically localized. Tissue Cell. 2020 Dec;67:101410. doi: 10.1016/j.tice.2020.101410. Epub 2020 Jul 13. PMID: 32835943.
• House NC, Polleys EJ, Quasem I, De la Rosa Mejia M, Joyce CE, Takacsi-Nagy O, Krebs JE, Fuchs SM, Freudenreich CH. Distinct roles for cerevisiaeH2A copies in recombination and repeat stability, with a role for H2A.1 threonine 126. Elife. 2019 Dec 5;8:e53362. doi: 10.7554/eLife.53362. PMID: 31804179; PMCID: PMC6927750.
• Carbonell AU, Cho CH, Tindi JO, Counts PA, Bates JC, Erdjument-Bromage H, Cvejic S, Iaboni A, Kvint I, Rosensaft J, Banne E, Anagnostou E, Neubert TA, Scherer SW, Molholm S, Jordan BA. Haploinsufficiency in the ANKS1B gene encoding AIDA-1 leads to a neurodevelopmental syndrome. Nat Commun. 2019 Aug 6;10(1):3529. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11437-w. PMID: 31388001; PMCID: PMC6684583.
• Wang X, Obeidat M, Li L, Pasarj P, Aburahess S, Holmes CFB, Ballermann BJ. TIMAP inhibits endothelial myosin light chain phosphatase by competing with MYPT1 for the catalytic protein phosphatase 1 subunit PP1cβ. J Biol Chem. 2019 Sep 6;294(36):13280-13291. doi: 10.1074/jbc.RA118.006075. Epub 2019 Jul 17. PMID: 31315927; PMCID: PMC6737228.
• Bartley C, Brun T, Oberhauser L, Grimaldi M, Molica F, Kwak BR, Bosco D, Chanson M, Maechler P. Chronic fructose renders pancreatic β-cells hyper-responsive to glucose-stimulated insulin secretion through extracellular ATP signaling. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2019 Jul 1;317(1):E25-E41. doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.00456.2018. Epub 2019 Mar 26. PMID: 30912960.
• LeBlanc BM, Le MT, Janis B, Menze MA, Hand SC. Structural properties and cellular expression of AfrLEA6, a group 6 late embryogenesis abundant protein from embryos of Artemia franciscana. Cell Stress Chaperones. 2019 Sep;24(5):979-990. doi: 10.1007/s12192-019-01025-8. Epub 2019 Jul 30. PMID: 31363993; PMCID: PMC6717223.
• Rashed MZ, Belott CJ, Janis BR, Menze MA, Williams SJ. New insights into anhydrobiosis using cellular dielectrophoresis-based characterization. Biomicrofluidics. 2019 Nov 15;13(6):064113. doi: 10.1063/1.5126810. PMID: 31768199; PMCID: PMC6858285.