Isolation and characterization of duck egg white Ovomucin

Abstract EN

In the current study, ovomucin was isolated from Egyptian duck and characterized by several methods including SDS-PAGE, Urea-PAGE, and amino acids composition.

Furthermore, Antibacterial activity was estimated against some gram positive and gram negative bacteria.

Based on SDS-PAGE, the ovomucin consists of 2 subunits β-ovomucin and α-ovomucin.

The molecular masses of these subunits are 400 and 210 KDa, respectively.

The migration in Urea-PAGE from anode to cathode direction indicated that ovomucin was much faster than their respective duck egg white protein referring to bigger positive charges and basic amino acids.

The content of the hydrophobic amino acids residues (Pro, Gly, Ala, Val, Ile, Leu, Phe) is 35.02 % and this represents 35.78 % of the total amino acids.

The content of the acidic amino acids residues (asp + glu) is 22.5 % and the case lower than that of the basic amino acids (arg + lys + his; 27.99 %).

The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of ovomucin from duck egg white was 50 μg/ml against Bacillus subtilis and 100 μg/ml against Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli.

This study elucidated that the ovomucin isolated from duck egg white has potent antibacterial activity against selected pathogenic bacteria.