Overview:
Pacific Immunology® offers generation of custom antibodies in rabbits, chickens and goats. Of these species, rabbits are recommended for most projects and represent over 90% of the projects that we run. Following is an overview of each species and its suitability for generating antibodies.
Rabbit Antibodies:
Rabbits are the recommended species for most projects because they offer consistent, strong immune responses against most antigens, generate large yields of antibody, complete affinity maturation in a short time period and offer high affinity against the antigen. Unpurified rabbit serum can be used directly in assays and is less expensive to purify.
Goat Antibodies:
Goats are similar to rabbits in producing a strong response against a wide range of antigens. However, because of their extra expense and slowness in developing maximum antibody titers, we recommend them for projects requiring very large volumes of antiserum (or for multiplexing applications).
Chicken Antibodies:
Because they are phylogenetically distant from mammalian species, chickens can offer an advantage in certain applications for generating antibodies against highly conserved mammalian proteins (although mammalian homology has rarely been a problem in our experience).
However, because the antibody is collected from the egg yolk, IgY or affinity purification is required before the antibody can be used in assays, making chicken projects more expensive in comparison to rabbit projects.