The New York Post reported scientists have discovered a way to un-boil an egg. Look for ExxonMobil to incorporate the breakthrough into it next propaganda campaign—while continuing to ignore its ability and responsibility to undo the damage caused by the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Scientists have learned how to un-boil an egg
By Chris Perez
Scientists have cracked the mystery of how to un-boil an egg.
As useless as it sounds, the innovation could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry, according to findings published last week in the journal ChemBioChem.
“Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,” said Gregory Weiss, University of California-Irvine professor of chemistry, molecular biology and biochemistry.
Like many others before him, Weiss had struggled to efficiently produce or recycle valuable molecular proteins in eggs which could possibly contain a wide range of applications.
The problem was that the proteins would frequently “misfold” into structurally incorrect shapes when they were formed, rendering them useless. Untangling them also created problems for scientists because of how long the process could take.
But UC-Irvine and Australian chemists have finally found a way to reverse the cooking process and untangle the proteins in a matter of minutes, according to their research.
“It speeds things up by a factor of thousands,” Weiss explained. “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.”
When the scientists conducted their research, the eggs they used weren’t just hard-boiled, but were also cooked for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees Fahrenheit). With the addition of urea — the main component of urine — the boiled egg whites were transformed back into liquid. The amino acids inside were then untangled using a vortex fluid device made of a thin glass tube spun at 5,000 rpm.
The groundbreaking technique will ultimately do wonders for cancer patients by producing cheaper antibodies, which are currently made using expensive ovaries from hamsters. They would instead be produced inside much cheaper yeast or bacteria cells, ChemBioChem reports.
The ability to re-form common proteins from yeast or E. coli bacteria at lightning-fast speeds could potentially streamline protein manufacturing and make cancer treatments more affordable. The new approach will also increase cheese production — giving farmers more bang for their buck, according to UCI News.
The university has filed for a patent on their work and its Office of Technology Alliances is in talks with interested commercial partners.
