Scientists say they've figured out a way to unboil an egg, a not-so-frivolous accomplishment that could improve the efficiency of biotechnology processes including cancer treatments and food production.

The achievement could dramatically cut costs for those activities and others being pursued in the $160 billion global biotechnology industry, say researchers at the University of California, Irvine, who worked with researchers at Flinders University in Australia.

As an egg is boiled, proteins in the egg white begin to unfold, then re-fold in a tight, tangled structure that gives the boiled egg its white, rubbery look.

Molecular proteins have a wide range of applications in biotechnology but often "misfold" into structurally incorrect shapes as they form, rendering them useless.

Now, researchers say they've learned how to untangle those proteins, a technique that could reduce costs in any biotechnology procedure that involves the folding of proteins.

"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," says UCI biochemistry professor Gregory Weiss. "We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return a key protein in the egg to working order."

Many kinds of proteins found in biotechnology research fold and tangle in similar ways during experiments, and having a way to return them to their original state could save both time and money, the researchers say.

Other methods for untangling proteins exist, but they take days to work, whereas the new method takes minutes, the say.

Their technique involves a substance that liquefies the boiled egg white, after which a machine known as a vortex fluidic device, created by the Australian research team, causes the tangled protein molecules in the liquid to shear apart and then refold normally.

"This method ... could transform industrial and research production of proteins," the researchers report in their study published in the journal ChemBioChem.

One area that could benefit is cancer treatment, Weiss says.

One treatment type uses lab-manufactured antibody proteins that cling to cancer cells, which allows the body's immune system to destroy them.

Producing those antibodies in the laboratory is both time-consuming and expensive, so the newly discovered process could produce them much more quickly and at less cost, Weiss says, making cancer treatments much more affordable.

"I can't predict how much money it will save, but I can [predict] this will save a ton of time, and time is money," he says.