Immune Response of Other Species

Avian (Birds). 

Avion eggs, specifically from domestic chickens have been used to produce antibodies. IgY may be readily obtained in large quantities from egg yolk, and presents a more cost effective, convenient, and hygienic alternative to mammalian antibodies. IgY has been shown to be effective against a number of enteric pathogens, including E. coli, and rotavirus (Kovacs-Nolan, J. I.Methods, 2005, 199-209). 

–Advantages of IgY: 

Avian antibodies offer a number of advantages which includes that 1) IgY is present in only the egg yolk while mammalian antibody classes are mixed together in serum, 2) IgY antibodies do not have corss-reacitions or activate either the complement system or clotting cascade, 3) chicken IgY may be freeze dried with little or no loss in functionality and 4) isolation of egg yolk does not involve needles  (US 13/177114). The immune response in an antibody-producing antimal also tends to increase as its phylogenetic difference with the animal used as the antigen source increases. Thus, chicken antibodies recognize more epitopes on a mammalian protin than the corresponding rabbit antibody (Schade, ATALA 24, 925-934, 1996). 

Jawless Vertebrates: The adaptive immune system in jawless vertebrates is comprised of clonally diverse lymphocytes. They have been named V lymphocytes, becasue they express Variable Lymphocyte Receptors (VLRs) dervied form the assembly of leucin-rich repeat (LRR) gene segments, rather than the immunoglobulin V, D, and J gene subunits tuilized by jawed vertebrates. Two VLR genes, VLR-1 and VLR-B, have been identified in lamprey and hagfish, the two extant representatives of the jawless vertebrates (agnathans). The germline VLR genes are incomplete in that they have coding regions only for the invariant N-terminal and C-terminal sequences separated by intervening sequences, lacking anoical splice sites. During development of cells of the lymphocyte lineage, flanking LRR modular units are seqeuntially inserted into the incomple VLR gene with a conconmitant deletion of the intervenin sequences via a gene conversion mechnisms to generate a mature VLR gene. The gene conversion process may be catalyzed by a recently identified activation-induced deaminase/apolipoprotein B-editing catalytic protein (AID-APOBEC) family members with lymphocyte restricted expression. (VLR-B+ lymphocytes (VB cells) constitute a major component of the humoral arm of the lamprey adaptive immune system. (Cooper, US 2012/0189640). 

Cooper, (US 2012/0189640) discloses prcoesses for making antigen specific polypeptides and more specifically monoclonal antigen specific polypeptides such as VLRs by adminstiering to a lamprey or hagfish one or mroe target antigens, isoalting an antigen specific protein-encoding RNA form lymphocytes of the lamprey or hagfish, ampoliyfing antigen specific protein encoding cDNA from the isolated RNA, cloining the cDNA into an expression vector, expressing the expression vector in a bacterium transformed with the expression vector, isolating a cDNA clone, transfecting a cultured cell with the cDNA clone, screening the culture supernatant for an ability to bind the antigen and isolating the antigen specific prtoein from the supernatant that binds the antigen.