Two-Step Egg 'Un'boilng Could Lead to Cheaper Cancer Treatments

Researchers have done the impossible; un-boil a boiled egg. The implications of the technique however extend beyond a meal.

According to New York Daily News, researchers at University of California, Irvine reversed the boiling process by separating proteins of egg white which massed together. The reversal process essentially is two-step and if successfully replicated in cancer drug production, it could cut treatment costs, researchers said.

"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," said Gregory Weiss at UC Irvine, in a news release.

In their paper published in the journal ChemBioChem, researchers begin with an egg boiled 20 minutes in water. They then pour urea on it, causing liquefaction of egg white. Next a device called vortex fluid device, a machine designed by an Australian scientist, causes the desired untangling of proteins.

Weiss and his team aren't the first to attempt recreation of original protein forms though they claim their method is the cheapest and quickest available. Discovery News notes that the technique could cut food production and cancer treatment costs.

 "The new process takes minutes. It speeds things up by a factor of thousands. This method could transform industrial and research production of proteins," researchers said.