EGG whites are one of the most versatile foods because they can foam, gel and act as emulsifiers. Very little is known about how the proteins in egg whites bind to achieve these properties - but use of X-rays has now given us clues. Nafisa Begam at the University of Tubingen in Germany and her colleagues used a technique known as X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy to understand how proteins form networks when egg white is cooked. They cooked egg white at 80°C while zapping it with X-rays. As the beam hits proteins of different sizes moving at different speeds, it bounces off them and scatters at varying wavelengths. Capturing these scatter patterns every 40 milliseconds to produce a total of 20,000 pictures allowed the team to reconstruct the movement of the proteins.
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