Scientists have figured out how to "unboil" egg whites in a finding that could help lower the cost of cancer treatments.
The remarkable findings could also have implications for food production and other aspects of biotechnology, the University of California - Irvine reported.
"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology and biochemistry. "In our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold. We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return a key protein in the egg to working order."
In the past, producing effective molecular proteins has been difficult because they often "misfold" into structurally incorrect shapes, making them impossible to use.
"It's not so much that we're interested in processing the eggs; that's just demonstrating how powerful this process is," Weiss said. "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."
Similar techniques have been created in the past but took up to four days to be completed; these new findings could allow the process to take only minutes. To recreate a clear protein called lysozyme, once an egg has been boiled the team applied a urea substance that "chews" away the whites and liquefies the solid materials. The researchers then used a vortex fluid device to untangle the balls of protein and force them into a proper form.
"This method ... could transform industrial and research production of proteins," the researchers wrote in a recent edition of ChemBioChem.
The findings could help pharmaceutical companies create drugs more quickly and easily, and could also help industrial cheese makers, farmers save money.
