Egg albumen polymorphisms in the Fowl: lociIIandIII

Abstract

The genetics of two polymorphic loci in the fowl was studied. Each affects the electrophoretic mobility of a different egg albumen protein, and at each locus two alleles were shown to segregate in a Mendelian manner.The polymorphic proteins are not any of the well-characterized egg albumen proteins, viz. ovalbumin, ovomucoid, ovomucin, flavoprotein, avidin and lysozyme.In contrast to all others, two hens were found to have an anomalous, variable, phenotype. A tentative explanation of this was offered.

Egg albumen polymorphisms in the fowl: The ovalbumin locus

“…types, electrophoresed under alkaline buffer conditions, together with the five-times crystallized sample of ovalbumin obtained from Dr P. Steven and illustrated in a previous paper (Lush, 1964). Unfortunately, ovalbumin has no unusual biochemical property, such as the binding of iron by conalbumin or of haemoglobin by mammalian haptoglobin, which might serve for the identification of the ovalbumin components-among the other egg albumen proteins in a starch gel, therefore an electrophoretic fraction was assumed to be a form of ovalbumin if it was involved in the genetic variation in that part of the electrophoretogram.…”

“…Brown Leghorns were used exclusively for this work. The storage of eggs and preparation of albumen have already been described (Lush, 1964).…”

“…For some experiments the procedure described in the previous paper (Lush, 1964) was used; this is referred to as 'alkaline buffer conditions'. For other experiments a new procedure was developed, referred to as 'acid buffer conditions', in which the gel buffer contained 0-00935 M Tris (hydroxymethyl) amino methane and 0-005 M citric acid, pH 5-1; and the end-tray buffer contained 0-041 M succinic acid and 0-05 M sodium hydroxide, pH 5-0.…”

Association of genetic polymorphisms with embryonic mortality in the chicken: II. The B blood-group system and the pure and crossbred progeny of two populations

“…Nevertheless, they gave some support to our hypothesis. As examples of the two types of polymorphism in chickens, we studied the B blood-group locus, which is extremely polyallelic (Gilmour, 1960), as contrasted with three diallelic loci affecting proteins of the egg white (Lush, 1961(Lush, , 1964Ogden et al 1962). Blood-group genotypes of zygotes but not of dams were associated with marked differences in mortality over the whole incubation period, the general effect being of overdominance.…”