Ancient Swiss cheesemaking
Cheesemaking has come a long way since its origins. Audrius Meskauskas (Audriusa), Ballenberg, Switzerland

'Biohackers' from San Francisco have created a world-first: cheese for vegans made from real, but animal-free, milk.

And they're also considering making it from humans.

According to the Nahwhal indiegogo page, Californian synthetic biologists have manipulated bakers' yeast into creating milk proteins (caseins).

When the caseins are mixed with water, vegan sugar and oil the mixture makes "a kind of milk which is ultimately converted into Real Vegan Cheese using the age-old cheese-making process".

The process involves inserting "natural milk-protein genetic sequences" from animal genomes into yeast. This causes the yeast to create milk proteins.

The biohackers also have an idea of how to make their 'cheese' healthier and reduce the chance of allergic reactions - by using human DNA.

But they acknowledge this won't be attractive for some: "Using human genes to make vegan milk may not be appetising to everyone, so for you folks that love good old-fashioned cow cheeses, we're also making a vegan cow cheese."

The volunteer biohackers are raising money for their research on crowdfunding website indiegogo.

Currently they are $900 short of their $20,000 goal, which would enable them to get Nahwhal out of the lab and into stores.

Whether vegans will be attracted to cheese made from bits of humans remains to be seen.