Action of Duck's Egg White Ovomucoid on Tryptic Hydrolysis of Casein in vitro

Abstract

IT has been reported by Dikshit and Patwardhan¹ that duck's egg white has a low efficiency for promotion of growth in rats when compared with hen's egg white. On autoclaving, the nutritive value of duck's egg white showed remarkable improvement². In vitro digestion of raw egg whites with trypsin indicated that the rate of hydrolysis of duck's egg white was much slower than that of hen's egg white. Ovomucoid prepared from duck's egg white according to the method of Lineweaver and Murray³ exhibited both antitryptic activity and suppression of growth in rats when added to their diets. The possibility of interference by the ovomucoid with the enzymatic release of one or more essential amino-acids by trypsin was envisaged. This communication gives the results of a preliminary investigation on the hydrolysis of casein by trypsin in presence of the purified duck's egg white ovomucoid, which showed that the liberation of several essential amino-acids was inhibited.