Eggs-citing eggs-periments with Leave a Nest and PtBio!
10 students, aged 7 to 10 years old, explored the humble egg in Leave a Nest Singapore's “What's in an Egg?” science workshop, conducted on 11 Jan 2025. This workshop was held in partnership with PtBio, a Japanese biotechnology startup that created allergy-reduced eggs. Mr. Takaaki Matsuki of PtBio joined the Leave a Nest team to deliver lectures and experiments that led students to discover more about each part of the egg.
The workshop kicked off with Mr. Matsuki (a.k.a. “Taka-sensei”) introducing students to the widespread problem of egg allergies, then giving them their mission of the day: find the molecule responsible for egg allergies! Workshop leader Leeyon then introduced students to a key scientific idea to help them achieve this mission: thinking about things in terms of their parts.
The curious students carried out a series of experiments to test the characteristics of each part of the egg, namely the egg shell, egg white, and egg yolk. Specifically, students found out how strong the egg shell is by stacking magazines on top of some eggs, and determined the composition of the egg white and egg yolk using simple tests for fats and proteins. After each experiment, Leeyon explained the scientific reasoning behind the results, giving students a better understanding of these phenomena, while Taka-sensei provided “Egg Facts” to help students see the egg from a foodtech perspective.
Finally, Taka-sensei revealed proteins as the ultimate culprit behind egg allergies, and introduced how PtBio solved a part of this social issue through gene editing, creating allergy reduced eggs. Overall, students experienced thinking about things in terms of parts, and heard about how practising this could bring about happiness for people, as in PtBio's case.
Leave a Nest Singapore would like to thank PtBio for partnering with us to conduct this science workshop. We are planning to conduct more editions of the “What's in an Egg?” workshop in the near future, so keep a look out for more updates!