Researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI) along with colleagues in Australia have successfully unboiled egg whites, meaning that they have managed to quickly and inexpensively restore the proteins in the egg to their original state.

When an egg is boiled, the heat causes the proteins in the egg to tangle and clump together. This is the process that turns the gelatinous liquid inside the egg into a solid. It is probably not something that most people will ever need to do in the kitchen. However, in science the same basic process has the potential to reduce the cost of cancer treatment, food production and other important areas of the biotechnology industry, which is worth $160 billion globally.

“Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg. 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,” said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & biochemistry in a statement. The paper Weiss refers to can be found in the journal ChemBioChem.

In scientific research, valuable molecular proteins frequently “misfold” when they are formed, which renders them useless. This new process has the potential to salvage those materials quickly.

“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 Weiss.

There are currently methods of recovering those materials, however those processes are both expensive and time consuming. Currently the equivalent of dialysis must be performed for four days. According to weiss, the new process takes only a few minutes, speeding things up by “a factor of thousands.”

Currently, as an example, pharmaceutical companies grow cancer antibodies in hamster ovary cells, which are expensive but do not often misfiled proteins. The ability to re-form proteins from yeast or E.coli bacteria could streamline the manufacturing process and greatly reduce the cost.

Numerous other examples of the same problem and potential solution can be found in a variety of areas, from cheese production to experimental biotechnology.

To unboil the egg, or re-create a clear protein known as lysozyme Weiss and his colleagues add a urea substance that re-liquifies the whites. Once the material is re-liquified the proteins are still congealed into an unusable mass. The researchers take that material and place it in a ‘vortex fluid device’ designed by Professor Colin Rastin and his associates at Flinders University in South Australia. Stress is applied to the congealed proteins which forces them back into their original form.

According to UCI, the university has applied for a patent on the method and is currently working with interested commercial partners.

“This method … could transform industrial and research production of proteins,” the researchers write in ChemBioChem.

While ‘transforming the industrial and research production of proteins’ may sound about as exciting as unboiling an egg to most consumers, it is potentially very good news for everyone.