Isolation and characterization of serum immunoglobulin classes of the ostrich (Struthio camelus).

Immunoglobulins were separated from ostrich sera by ammonium sulfate precipitation and ion-exchange chromatography. Two classes of immunoglobulin could be identified, corresponding to IgG and IgM of other species, based on elution profiles from ion-exchange columns and molecular mass estimation on gel-filtration chromatography and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). On SDS-PAGE, the heavy chains of IgG and IgM were shown to have molecular masses of 67.