Biotin labelling of chicken antibodies and their subsequent use in ELISA and immunohistochemistry

Avian antibodies have many advantages to mammalian antibodies due to the phylogenetic differences between birds and mammals, resulting in an increased sensitivity and a decreased background in many immunological assays. Since the avidin-biotin system is an efficient detection system for antibodies with a high sensitivity, we wanted to investigate the activity and unspecific binding of optimally biotin labelled chicken antibodies in ELISA and immunohistochemistry. We report on the conditions for biotinylation of chicken antibodies and that optimally biotinylated antibodies show a high activity and a low background in both ELISA and immunohistochemistry.