Avidin

Abstract

Early scientific reports described the toxicity of uncooked egg white in rats when administered orally. The resulting syndrome, with peculiar anomalies such as dermatitis, indicated malnutrition and especially vitamin B deficiency (Boas 1927). Later, this malnutrition was attributed to a lack of available biotin (vitamin H or B8), because of the binding of this essential growth factor by the egg white glycoprotein avidin (Gyorgy et al. 1941). The biological function of avidin is still unknown, but because of its high affinity for biotin, it is thought to serve as a defensive protein against biotin-requiring micro-organisms (Korpela et al. 1983). © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.