Chemists find a way to unboil eggs

UC Irvine and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites – an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry, according to findings published today in the journal ChemBioChem.

"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & 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."

For example, pharmaceutical companies currently create cancer antibodies in expensive hamster ovary cells that do not often misfold proteins. The ability to quickly and cheaply re-form common proteins from yeast or E. coli bacteria could potentially streamline protein manufacturing and make cancer treatments more affordable. Industrial cheese makers, farmers and others who use recombinant proteins could also achieve more bang for their buck.

phys.org...

I find hearing such news fascinating. It is amazing when technology advances and lets us do things that might have seemed impossible some decades ago. Even the word - unboil - does not officially even exist in English (I can not say it 100%, but I could not find the word in any of the larger online dictionaries). Considering the potential uses of such process, I truly hope it will be started to be used in the industries in coming years.

a reply to: Cabin

Yes, it is fascinating what we can come up with, a little frightening, but I dont want to derail your discovery with a bunch of half cooked speculation

a reply to: Cabin

Clickbait headline from physorg. They didn't unboil an egg, they recovered 1 protein.

These advantages in modern science are just the cause for the decline of Science Fiction!

I read about this theory some days ago, and the conclusion was that modern technology seems to be able to do things which even the most prolific writers of SF can not overtake.


Unboiling eggs.. Sounds so simple. Yet, it might help to uncover gigantic new areas of biotechnologies.

originally posted by: Cabin
I find hearing such news fascinating. It is amazing when technology advances and lets us do things that might have seemed impossible some decades ago. Even the word - unboil - does not officially even exist in English (I can not say it 100%, but I could not find the word in any of the larger online dictionaries). Considering the potential uses of such process, I truly hope it will be started to be used in the industries in coming years.

You're right, it is fascinating...

an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments... ...could potentially streamline protein manufacturing and make cancer treatments more affordable

...but don't be surprised if those involved "commit suicide" or start having unfortunate accidents.

Industrial cheese makers, farmers and others who use recombinant proteins could also achieve more bang for their buck.

You know, I don't mean to make light of the implications of this scientific breakthrough (my father is currently battling cancer), But I really hope this means the price of cheese is going to come down.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: Cabin

Clickbait headline from physorg. They didn't unboil an egg, they recovered 1 protein.

Maybe you should look again, they never claimed they unboiled an egg, they claimed they found a way to do it. If they can recover 1 protein it stands to reason they can recover more, right?

That sounds really innovative. Next they'll find a way to reconfigure digested food.

The new company 2-D Fluidics Pty Ltd is owned equally by Flinders University and First Graphene. It will commercialise the Vortex Fluidic Device (VFD), which was invented at the South Australian university by Professor Colin Raston and his team.

In 2015, the researchers from the Flinders Institute for NanoScale Science and Technology in Adelaide were awarded an Ig Nobel Award for creating the Vortex Fluidic Device and using it to unboil an egg.

phys.org - Graphene company partners with university to commercialise egg-unboiling machine.

The click-bait payoff!! It only took a couple years but phys.org stuck with it. So who now has... oh!! Wait for it! It has to be done!... has egg on their face?? [legendary!]

And the machine is not for proteins or separating them and refolding them it is for producing graphene and carbon nanotubes.

They toss some Sri Lankan graphite into the machine. It creates a whirlpool and shreds the carbon back down into graphene platelets which can be used as CNTs or rG (or rGO). I think there is a laser involved in there to.

If this works to make bulk graphene and CNTs at volume then the VFD payoff will be well won. Otherwise, I wonder if you can sous vide a poached egg with one?

Next up: toothpaste back into the tube!