Eliciting antigen-specific egg-yolk IgY with naked DNA

Immunization with naked DNA was, used to elicit chicken egg yolk antibodies , (IgY), Layer hens were inoculated with plasmid DIVA encoding the enhanced green fluorescent protein, the fusion protein of Newcastle disease virus, and VP2 of African horse sickness virus. IgY was extracted from egg yolks b y polyethylene glycol precipitation. Specific antibodies were present in th e yolky of eggs from hens, immunized with each of the three different plasm ids. This, approach to raising polyclonal antibodies obviates the need to p roduce and purify large quantities of proteins for immunization. and can po tentially yield large amounts, of diagnostically or therapeutically useful reagents.