ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

Isolation of Albumin Protein from Egg

Eggs are an excellent source of nutrients. Egg whites are used in food, cosmetic, and biotechnology industries for a plethora of physiological functions that they demonstrate due to their proteins. Although these proteins look promising, they can be utilised only after they have been isolated/extracted from the egg white. The objectives of this study were to develop a procedure for the extraction of the major egg white proteins, lysozyme (LSZ), ovomucin (OVM), ovotransferrin (OVT), and ovalbumin (OVA), and to simplify the developed method in order to execute a step wise scale-up from a lab scale (100 g egg white) to a pilot scale (20 kg egg white). The specific focus of this study was to improve the existing protocols in order to reduce the experimental setup requirement and thus reduce the cost of extraction. This was achieved by optimizing the extraction conditions for LSZ (cation exchange resin based separation), applying the traditional siphon filtration for the separation of resin particle, OVM, and OVT precipitates, and elimination of any heat treatments for OVA purification.