Determination of Bovine Transferrin Types by Disc Electrophoresis

Two electrophoresis methods were developed and used in the initial phase of this investigation, to determine which one would be the most desirable in determining the transferrin type of cattle blood plasma.The recently innovated disc electrophoresis method was chosen over the conventional starch gel method, because it produced more discrete transt'errin bands~ which were more easily analyzed.The reasons for this improved resolution were that the acrylamide gel pore size could be adjusted, and the starting zone of the sample was very narrow.The disc electrophoresis technique included the formation of a threelayered acrylamide gel in a small glass cylinder.The upper {sample) get contained four microliters of the plasma sample.The middle (spacer) gel electrophoretieally concentrated the sample proteins.Electrophoretic separation of the proteins took place in the lower (small pore) gel, which served as sieving medium.Following electrophoresis, the samples were fixed and stained, destained, placed in small containers~ and ana!yzed for the transferrin type.To evaluate the aecuraey of the technique, samples of blood plasma from 35 Santa Gertrudis animals were tested several times.In all eases the original transferrin determination was in full agreement with all subsequent evaluations.