Transport across the rabbit foetal yolk-sac of fractions of IgG from several mammalian species.

Electrophoretically migrating fast and slow IgG fractions of rabbit, mouse, human, guinea-pig, dog, horse and cow sera were prepared by DEAE-cellulose chromatography, labelled with either 131I or 125I, and tested in passage across yolk-sac splanchnopleur of rabbits. In foetal sera, slow IgG generally reached higher concentrations than fast IgG, but even with mouse Ig, which has a high ratio between the two fractions, the difference was only four-fold. This differential between fast and slow IgG was not sufficient to explain the absorptive selectivity between IgG of different species. The capacity of isotopically labelled rabbit and equine IgG to be transported across the rabbit foetal yolk sac was also studied using fractions prepared by isoelectric focusing. Marked differences in concentration quotient (CQ) values (CQ equals (concentration in foetal serum)/(concentration in injected material)) between individual pI peaks for these species were found.