Chemists find a way to unboil eggs | Hacker News Reader

Chemists find a way to unboil eggs

phys.org

164 pointslelf52 comments

To clarify: chemical processes that "unboil eggs" have been around for a long time [1]. The invention here is a technique that does it faster with applications in the pharma industry.

[1] http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/raven6b/graphics/raven06b/...

Somewhat off topic: you know, in the comments section of almost every science article I read there is a disclaimer similar to yours. For example, I was reading about scientists lengthening telomeres and several people had to step in to say "no this has been done several times but this is slightly cheaper." I guess that's the nature of research, but it's a bizarre feeling when it seems you never hear about the origination of some technology and yet every time you read about it it's still years away from practical application.

The likely application for this technology is to enable mass production of specific engineered proteins to become cheaper.

When you have a method to rapidly untangle misfolded or otherwise undesirable proteins from a tangled mass of denatured protein, that enables you to use vats of monocellular organisms to create your desired end-product, crack the cell wall or cell membrane in a manner that would denature the proteins, then use the described process to un-denature and separate the proteins. Then it re-folds.

Using such a process, you might be able to produce spider silk using modified yeast instead of modified goat milk--or actual spiders.

Don't get your hopes up, the procedure is patented.

And the patent will be likely be licensed for a shitload of uses... this is hardly a patent where creating a monopoly makes sense.

So? Why is it bad that the procedure is patented? That's not automatically a bad thing. People invest money and time into R&D and the patent allows them to protect the invention while they make a return on that investment.

Patent trolls (organizations that patent something inane, never make the product and pray on businesses who can't afford to fight you) are the problems. I don't see an indication that these guys are trolls.

Reminds me of that old headline, "Percy Spencer finds a way to melt a candy bar in his pocket."

Seriously, people, this discovery is not really about being able to unboil eggs. It's about a way to quickly and efficiently restore common proteins that have been misformed through heat or other processes.

I think I’m lacking context - what’s the non-literal meaning behind that headline?

He walked in front of a radar system with a chocolate bar in his pocket, it melted, and the microwave was born.

Melting a candy bar in your pocket is a normal occurrence, "unboiling" an egg was previously impossible. We used to refer to the example of "un-baking" a chicken as an example of a process that was irreversible. I'd think unboiling an egg is of similar ilk.

Not until the 1940s it wasn't (search on candy bar): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Spencer#Career

OP just means the headline is talking only about the somewhat mundane event, not the much bigger implications.

Having a candy bar melt in your pocket is mundane. Un-boiling an egg is NOT mundane.

Maybe I'm not understanding your point, obviously you aren't claiming that before the 1940's candy bars didn't melt in people pockets?

That's exactly my claim. Otherwise why would Percy Spencer have been carrying it there, and why would he have been surprised when it melted?

Unboiling an egg is quite mundane when compared to what else you could do with egg-unboiling technology. (I'll leave that speculation to the other fine comments on this post)

I think the parent commenter is trying to make the point that candy bars commonly melt in people's pockets by processes other than microwave radiation. Body heat, or the weather in Arizona can both cause the same effect. Microwave radiation near your crotch is, fortunately, not common at all.

Unboiling an egg seems a lot less mundane than a candy bar melting, to me.

Nobody is comparing unboiling an egg to a candy bar melting. And nobody cares whether body heat or Arizona typically melt candy bars (they do) since it's totally irrelevant to the Percy Spencer story. Please tell me you read this thread from the beginning?

To repeat: "OP just means the headline is talking only about the somewhat mundane event, not the much bigger implications." And, yes, unboiling an egg is a mundane headline when compared to its much bigger implications.

Mundane basically means common. Unboiling an egg is not common, a candy bar melting in one's pocket is common.

Please don't omit the "when compared to" clause.

Driving is mundane when compared to flying a fighter jet in combat. But driving is not mundane.

And I don't understand why you're still saying the candy bar melting in Spencer's pocket isn't surprising. It's his story. Spencer himself said it was surprising. Can't you take his word for it?

btw, I like your handle. :) I'm an ex-philadelphian, migrated south for the winter.

I would love to hear why the person that down-voted this comment did so?

Probably because it was off topic. HN discourages these types of contribution; they're seen as more 'reddit-like' than the community here aspires to.

The first half of this sounds like it would make an excellent kitchen cleaner, too. My wife's bread experiments--while a freaking delicious treat--are also a freaking bear to clean up. The stretched and kneaded dough gets everywhere and refuses to budge from any slightly-porous surface it may contact.

My wife made bread last night, and while I sympathize - the parchment paper we baked it on stuck to the bottom of the bread - we didn't have any other porous surfaces anywhere near the dough.

I'm specifically thinking of the wooden spoon used to mix the dough.

not sure of your exact circumstances but I find it important to not let anything sit in the sink. If you can get your spoons and bowls washed as soon as you are done using them, then the dough remnants won't dry out become a cleaning issue.

Yes, that is absolutely a factor. But apparently my wife doesn't believe in cleaning up after herself. Only after me.

But can he help us when we burn eggs to the bottom of the pan?

Cook with more fat and/or more heat. Don't put anything into a cold pan.

The best way I've found to make fried eggs is to put them over a thin layer of vegetable oil over a cold teflon pan, and turn the heat on medium-low.

> make cancer treatments more affordable

Cute that this article believes the price of biologics for cancer treatment is in any way related to the price of manufacture.

Not the price of manufacture, the cost of research is what this will reduce.

And the research cost is definitely correlated with the final price.

From the article:

> 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.

That is not saying research. That is quite explicitly claiming lower price of manufacture will result in cheaper cancer treatments.

It will result in cancer treatments that are cheaper to produce.

This does not mean the treatments will be more widely available, not that they will be cheaper.

Remember that drugs useful for cancer treatment in the USA are already orders of magnitude more expensive than non-US products simply because they can be.

What would this do for the storage of eggs if it could be made into a easy at home process some day? For example, my brother has chickens, which he gives the eggs out to the family. However, they lay more eggs than the family needs. He doesn't want to sell these eggs, but just wants them to be available for a much longer time. Would this process allow for the eggs to be stored for a much longer amount of time?

> "It's not so much that we're interested in processing the eggs; that's just demonstrating how powerful this process is," Weiss said. "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."

It's not really about eggs, but reusing protein material that has folded incorrectly.

Short answer - no

Besides, refrigerated eggs keep for months. And you instantly recognize a bad egg from the pugnant smell - if you have doubts the egg is fine and edible.

Unrefrigerated eggs also keep for months it's not necessary to refrigerate eggs.

It is in the US.

Egg's are washed which results in the membrane on the outside being removed. This allows easier access for bacteria if not refrigerated.

I read that article too, but the reality is you don't need to refrigerate them. They don't spoil, even in the US.

Definitely not true. I worked at a grocery store a long time ago. A power outage that lasted three days caused the egg case to smell horrendous. Hundreds of eggs were spoiling within a few days.

> Definitely not true.

Actually it definitely is true. In most countries in the world except the US eggs are not refrigerated at all.

You probably had some broken eggs, or an egg had broken in the past and was never fully cleaned. The unbroken eggs were fine, but the smell from the broken ones was getting into them.

Be careful doing this.

Eggs don't need to be refrigerated BUT only if they have never been refrigerated. So, if you take an egg straight from the nest, for example, you don't need to refrigerate it, and it will keep for a long time – definitely weeks, maybe even months, I don't know.

However, once an egg has been refrigerated, their natural protective coating, the cuticle, starts drying out. Also, most commercial egg processors wash eggs, mostly to make them look cleaner but also, in theory, to remove salmonella. So, between the washing and the dry refrigerator environment, that cuticle is mostly gone by the time it gets to the supermarket. When you take a cold egg and leave it out at room temperature, it begins to sweat, which facilitates the growth of bacteria that could contaminate the egg.

In summary, yes, fresh from the farm eggs, can be left out at room temperature. Refrigerated supermarket eggs should be kept in the fridge or used the same day they are taken out of the fridge – ideally within 2 hours.

I've been doing this for years and had absolutely no problems. I buy eggs and leave them out with no problem at all. In one case I bought a case and left it out for a full month - not a single spoiled egg.

What country are you in? Eggs are handled differently in the EU and US meaning safe handling at home is different.

Eggs last maybe 5 weeks after sell by date. It's great that you haven't had any problems, but don't forget that salmonella will be more severe for children or old people. Salmonella can, rarely, kill vulnerable people. "salmonellosis continues to be an important cause of preventable death [...]" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20617938/

CDC estimated in 2005 that there were maybe 1.4m to 4m infections in the US, with about 500 to 600 deaths.

http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/nontyphoidal_sa...

US.

> Eggs are handled differently in the EU and US meaning safe handling at home is different.

Not exactly. The chickens are handled differently. In the EU they immunize them from salmonella. (But in most other countries in the world they don't, and they don't refrigerate either.)

The whole washing the egg part is a red herring in a very nice article - but it actually makes no difference.

To deal with salmonella just cook the eggs. And I would not use a raw egg even if it was refrigerated. If I wanted raw egg for a dish I would get pasteurized eggs.

> Eggs last maybe 5 weeks after sell by date.

No, they last for several months. As in they don't spoil. The egg is lower quality though, but that only matter for some dishes.

My understanding is that it's both -- the egg laying hen population in the US has some amount of salmonella infection, plus washing the cuticle off does something to promote salmonella growth in the egg (contamination from the feces on the shell able to get into the egg?). I don't have citations for this, though, and would be curious to learn more, if anyone has a good authoritative source.

USDA statistics from 1996 on salmonella in eggs put it at 1:10,000 to 1:20,000 chance of an egg being infected. It's a case of odds, and how you cook the eggs. If you're taking a dozen eggs and making mayo from scratch, then making 100 sandwiches in a cafeteria, the odds are sufficiently high that once a year you're going to make everyone sick. If you're making sunny-side up eggs, the yolk won't get heated enough to pasteurize it, but the impact is at least greatly reduced. If you're properly scrambling the eggs, then yes, they get hot enough to reduce the pathogen count to be a non-issue.

In case you accidentally boiled some eggs.. Science give us hope.

If only there was further information available that shows how important this process could be in a variety of areas including the production of cancer treatments.

Why, we could even see if we can set things up so when you click on the words in the title you're taking to this "Additional Relevant Templated Information Containing Lists of Examples" or "ARTICLE" for short.

Interesting idea. Then if someone didn't understand that they had to click the words, you could describe this Relevant Templating From Archives, or "RTFA" for short.

"To re-create a clear protein known as lysozyme once an egg has been boiled, he and his colleagues add a urea substance that chews away at the whites, liquefying the solid material."

Another interesting use for human waste however I'm not sure I would like to eat an egg that was treated with urea.

Urea is used as a food additive:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16422263/

> Urea is generally recognized as safe by FDA for the following uses: side-seam cements for food contact; an inhibitor or stabilizer in pesticide formulations and formulations applied to animals; internal sizing for paper and paperboard and surface sizing and coating of paper and paper board that contact water-in-oil dairy emulsions, low-moisture fats and oils, moist bakery products, dry solids with surface containing no free fats or oil, and dry solids with the surface of fat or oil; and to facilitate fermentation of wine.

It's a natural component of food:

http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/SC...

It can be a synthetic compound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea

Carbamide (another name for urea) is used in some chewing gums.

Wait until you hear about Dihydrogen Monoxide. It's a major constituent of urine, yet widely used as a food additive and even sold bottled for human consumption.

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