Can you unboil an egg?

Shear-stress-mediated refolding of proteins from aggregates and inclusion bodies

Chemists partially “unboiled” an egg by spinning cooked egg white in a special whirling machine.

Yuan, T. Z., Ormonde, C. F. G., Kudlacek, S. T., Kunche, S., Smith, J. N., Brown, W. A., et al. · ChemBioChem, 2015

Ig Nobel 2015

Boiling an egg tangles up its proteins. The team took cooked egg white and spun it in a vortex fluid device, a fast-spinning tube that stretches and shears the liquid inside.

Within minutes, a key egg-white protein untangled back into working shape. The real goal is cheaper medicine and lab proteins, but the headline wrote itself.

the verdict

You can’t unscramble an egg. Unboiling it, though? Apparently negotiable.