Effectively preparing soluble ovomucin with high antiviral activity from egg white

Ovomucin has a great potential because of its numerous bioactivities, which makes it an attractive molecule for industrials. However, to isolate soluble ovomucin without degradation and contamination remains a challenge. In this study, ovomucin of high purity (99.13%) was obtained in good yield (3.02 g kg−1 fresh egg white) via an improved two-step precipitation followed by gel filtration chromatography. The IC50 of the preparation for three representative new disease virus strains named LaSota, Mukteswar and V-4 is 1.99, 4.95 and 5.78 × 10−3 g L−1, respectively. Produced ovomucin showed limited reduction in the hemagglutination inhibition activity against all of the virus strains during the purification. Infrared spectroscopy of the ovomucin preparation indicated extensive glycosylation and sulfation. Amino acid analysis found that it was rich in alanine, glutamic acid, threonine and valine residues, which is typical in mucins. The improved process developed in this study is an alternative approach to obtain pure ovomucin with elevated antiviral activity and purity, which may significantly push forward the further research on bioactivities of ovomucin.