An international group of scientists have found a way to un-boil a hen's egg and it could have an important impact on treating cancer.
According to the Guardian, the researchers developed a "vortex fluid device" to take an egg from its cooked white state back to a liquid. With their study, published in the journal ChemBioChem, the scientists dramatically reduced the amount of time it takes to recycle proteins from a matter of days to a matter of minutes.
The researchers believe their work can have numerous applications, but maybe none as significant as potentially driving cancer treatments costs downward. They said the reverse egg boiling method could help produce antibodies that fight cancer cells more efficiently.
Cheese manufacturers are also bound to be happy with these results, as they should be able to use the method to increase their yields.
"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," study researcher Gregory Weiss, a professor of chemistry and molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), said in a press release. "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.
"It's not so much that we're interested in processing the eggs; that's just demonstrating how powerful this process is.
"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."
