Preparation of high purity egg phosvitin using anion exchange chromatography

Egg yolk phosvitin serves as a warehouse to provide metal ions for embryo development. It is significant for mineral metabolism study and also of great potential to be developed into functional foods with mineral absorption promoting ability. In this study, phosvitin was first extracted from yolk granules using 10% NaCl, dialysed and then adjusted to various pHs to remove impurities. The purity of phosvitin extracts was increased from 54.5% to 63.7% at decreasing pH from 8.0 to 5.5, and started to decrease afterwards. Both the yield and recovery were significantly decreased at decreasing pHs, especially at pHs close to its pI (pH 4.0), indicating the occurrence of co-precipitation of phosvitin with HDL. The extract prepared at pH 8.0 showed the highest recovery of 82.7%; its purity was increased from 54.5% to 97.1% by anion exchange chromatography, with a recovery of 42.0%. This simple method could be scaled up for industrial production.