Isolation of sheep spleen ferritin.

Ferritin was isolated from the spleen of sheep and found to contain an iron/protein content of 21 per cent. Electrophoretic behaviour on 6 per cent polyacrylamide gel revealed three protein bands of Rf values of 5.7, 19.3 and 76.1. Sheep ferritin has a molecular weight of about 475,000 daltons and is high in glutamic acid, leucine and aspartic acid and low in methionine and cysteine. Sheep ferritin is not crystallisable by 10 per cent cadmium sulphate and has an ultraviolet-visible spectrum similar to that of bovine ferritin. Anti (sheep) ferritin antibodies raised in rabbits showed a 57.1 per cent binding at a serum dilution of 1:800 and 30 per cent binding at a 1:12,800 dilution, in a titre determination using double antibody assay procedure.