Did you ever wish you could unboil those eggs you just finished boiling, just so that you could use them in some other culinary masterpiece? Well, maybe someday you can thanks to a team of scientists at the University of California.
Researchers have developed a new technique that allows them to unboil egg whites, and they believe that this new and groundbreaking method could one day help reduce costs for cancer treatments while at the same time providing aid to further protein research.
In a study published in the journal ChemBioChem, Professor Gregory Weiss of the University of California, Irvine says that they have indeed found a way to unboil an egg.
"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," Weiss says. "In our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold."
For the experiment, his team boiled egg whites for 20 minute intervals at 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees Fahrenheit). They then added a urea substance, that "chews away at the whites" to liquefy the solid material and break down proteins.
Urea is a chemical compound that is found in urine, although it can also be made artificially as well.
But even once the whites have been liquefied and the proteins broken down, they are still tangled and unusable. Scientists took this liquid solution and poured it into a "vortex fluid device." The machine applies stress to the tiny pieces, forcing them back to their untangled, original form.
And while it may mean transforming the research industry with cheaper processes in the formation of cancer treatments and vaccinations, it is not yet known if the egg remains edible after going through this process to be "unboiled."
"It's not so much that we're interested in processing the eggs - that's just demonstrating how powerful this process is," Weiss says. "The real problem is there are lots of cases of gummy proteins that you spend way too much time scraping off your test tubes, and you want some means of recovering that material."
He went on to explain that the old processes of untangling proteins are expensive and time consuming, usually taking approximately four days. But his new method is rather quick, and substantially less expensive.
"The new process takes minutes" Weiss says. "It speeds things up by a factor of thousands."
Researchers believe that the ability to quickly and cheaply re-form common proteins could help streamline protein manufacturing making cancer treatments much more affordable. The pharmaceutical ndustry could benefit, as well as, industrial cheese makers and farmers who use proteins as part of their production. While this may not be something we can do in our own homes as of yet, the medical benefits of unboiling eggs alone could help people suffering from cancer across the world.
